LOS ANGELES -- Was the camera-equipped Nintendo DSi really an omen of things to come in the videogame industry?
The Electronic Entertainment Expo is in full swing here in Los Angeles, and not one but two camera peripherals have already been announced. Microsoft's big announcement at its Monday press event was Project Natal, an accessory for Xbox 360 that tracks the movement of your body in 3-D space and can recognize faces. Hours later, game publisher Ubisoft took a swing at Microsoft, saying that it would cut out in front of Redmond to deliver the first camera for next-generation consoles this holiday season with its fitness game* Your Shape* for Wii.
And Nintendo and Sony haven't even thrown their press briefings yet. That's tomorrow. And the rumor is that Sony will also unveil a camera-enabled controller. That's in addition to the EyeToy camera it already markets. What's the deal with all the cameras, anyway? Cameras are notoriously ineffective as game controllers, although Microsoft in particular promises that its will be unlike anything we've tried before. I'll wait until we're actually able to get our hands on these controllers later this week before offering my thoughts.
Microsoft didn't say when Project Natal would be released, or give any indication as to how much it will cost. This, of course, is going to change how big of an impact this new controller has on the industry -- for example, what if it doesn't ship until next Christmas and is $200? Without all that data, it's tough to get a read on things.
Press conferences from Electronic Arts and Ubisoft finished out the day. EA stuck to mostly projects we'd already heard about. We didn't see Suda 51 or Shinji Mikami take the stage to discuss their project with EA Partners, and there were no huge surprises. The closest things would be the announcement of two new EA Partners projects that will surely get hard-core gamers in a bother: Crysis 2, being developed for consoles as well as PC, and EA's acquisition of All Points Bulletin, the upcoming multiplayer online game from the maker of Crackdown. (The fact that Microsoft also announced Crackdown 2 just makes me even happier.)
At Ubisoft, it was also a day of shoring up all the previously-announced games like Assassin's Creed II, Splinter Cell, Red Steel 2, etc. There was also a lot of attention paid to Wii -- besides the aforementioned fitness game and Motion Plus-enabled sword slasher, a new exclusive soccer game featuring Pele and the latest Rabbids title were spotlighted.
What both companies wanted to stress is that they are all over the growing market for tween girl-oriented gaming. Electronic Arts showed a new series of tween party games for Wii and DS, and Ubisoft pointed out that two of its biggest-selling brands are Imagine and Petz, and showed how those series would evolve in 2009. Most interestingly, they're releasing a game called Style Lab Makeover that will be one of the first games enhanced for the DSi -- you'll be able to take your picture and make yourself over. (Not you specifically, because you are not a tween girl.)
Electronic Arts' Peter Moore also spent a good deal of time talking about casual titles, like the Motion Plus-enabled Grand Slam Tennis and EA Sports Active, which he said has sold over 600,000 copies.
In the two years that E3 has been asleep, a lot seems to have changed. In 2006, you didn't hear much about these sorts of games at E3 press briefings, but now it seems like almost a requirement for publishers to tout their lineups of tween and casual titles.
Overall, although Microsoft definitely had some solid new additions to the 360 lineup, I'm still waiting for somebody to make the kind of shocking surprise announcement that came to define the classic E3.
