FortNinety
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I was digging around some old documents on my computer and came across the following... a copy of an article that was posted by the long dead Daily Radar. It's an overview of E3 from 2000, with an emphasis on Sega, which still quite strong back then. I found it an extremely interesting read (especially today, for obvious reasons), so I figured that it's worth sharing...
Daily Radar's Big E3 Wrap Up
E3 is never what you expect it will be... or how David beat Goliath with a maraca.
This was to be the year of the PlayStation2. Everyone in the industry knew it. Last year, Sega had an amazing booth and plenty of industry support -- particularly from retailers -- and the overwhelming feeling on the floor was excitement about the Dreamcast. But in private conversations, developers from companies as large as EA and as small as Kalisto would shake their heads and mutter quietly, "it's good that they got one last great show before Sony destroys them."
Flash forward to this year and, while there were still a few people muttering the same thing about Sega's massive, exciting booth ("it's a good show, but it's their last"), the plurality of those we spoke to on the floor said things more like, "who knew Sony would blow it this badly?" You see, last year Sony looked untouchable. The PlayStation2 was technologically superior, it was backward compatible with the most successful console in the history of videogames, and it was being funded by the entire Sony Empire. Sega was billions in debt, big companies like EA and Square were refusing to support the Dreamcast, and the console just seemed too little, too late.
And Sega's message -- "it's about the games, stupid" -- sounded, a year ago, like the bleat of a lamb about to be slaughtered. Of course Sega would say that. Its technology was inferior, it hadn't had a presence in the marketplace for years, and everybody was pledging support to the PlayStation2 over a year before its release. But if there's one statement on earth that E3 2000 served to prove it is this: it is about the games. With titles as varied as Samba de Amigo, ShenMue, NFL 2K1 and Black and White, nearly all looking highly polished and just about to be released, the Sega booth was the hit of the show. People were crammed around monitors, playing games, shouting, laughing and generally enjoying themselves which, after all, is the point of our whole industry.
Sony, on the other hand, opened the show on Wednesday with a "super secret" press conference at which it told a crowd full of gamers that games are hardly the main goal of the PS2. Accenting digital entertainment, especially DVDs, Sony waited until late in its conference to have Phil Harrison, VP of Third Party Development, come out and tell the crowd about the games. Add to that an announcement of a $300 price point going against a $150 Dreamcast that will be entirely free with the Sega.com ISP, and the chinks in Sony's armor were obvious before the show floor even opened. And, as people filed out of the super secret event, they were treated to a Sega bar-b-que in the parking lot with live music and plenty of mockery for the electronics giant. It set the tone for the rest of the show. Sega's party in the parking lot extended to its big booth of fun, and the moribund tone of Sony's press conference seeped into its museumlike booth, where row after row of choppy games were ignored by the majority of attendees.
As several people we spoke to pointed out, it did not bode well for Sony's show that it chose to place PlayStation2s playing DVD movies at the front of its booth. Its high quality DVD playback abilities seem, in Sony's mind, to be the high point of the system. They might be right. Many of the games in Sony's booth were so far from completion they never should have been on the floor (we actually saw someone throw a controller down while playing one demo/slide show running at 5 frames per second). However, there were some bright spots. Capcom's Onimusha looked fun (though more than a bit derivative of Res Evil), Epic's Unreal Tournament on PS2 was much smoother and prettier than at GDC, and, of course, EA's games -- found only at EA's booth -- all looked great. The crown jewel of the show for PS2, though, was Metal Gear Solid 2. Even though it was only present in video form at the Konami booth, it was one of the most spectacular displays of game beauty ever to grace the halls of E3 and energized everyone who saw it.
Sony's show was certainly made difficult by the late release of its dev kits in the US. Most developers have only had the Tool, as it's called, since January. Four months isn't a long development cycle, and almost every developer we spoke to mentioned that the PS2 is a nightmare to work with. This hasn't helped Sony's cause, and it helped stoke the buzz for Microsoft's upcoming Xbox.
Microsoft's console had a strange presence at the show. There were a slew of banners hanging from ceilings, and the staircase up to the show floor was a giant Xbox ad, but at the big M's booth, there was only a demo movie attendees had to stand in line for. The behind closed doors Xbox demo we watched was dull, focusing mostly on the power of direct music. Of course, Microsoft can hardly be blamed for having no games to talk about on a platform that's still 18 months away, but if you're going to advertise your system all over the show, it's generally considered polite to actually bring the system. All that being said, most of the PS2 developers we spoke to mentioned Xbox as their hope for salvation. "Maybe Xbox will be easier to work with," was a common thread.
But if there's anyone who had a non-show at E3, it was Nintendo. Actually, non-show is too harsh, but the company's steadfast refusal to even talk about the next generation a full year after it announced its next-gen platform (Dolphin was unveiled at E3 last year) was peculiar to say the least. Nintendo's first- and second-party games looked, almost every one of them, to be great, but any effort to find third-party support elsewhere on the floor went unrewarded. In general, Nintendo appears to have lost any relevance in the "console war" as it will just keep on plugging away, making games that will sell millions of units on its platforms, drawing very little support away from other systems, and not even bothering to follow the generational cycles of other companies. While this is frustrating to news junkies like us, it does say a lot about the power of Nintendo. The company can do whatever it likes, make a fortune doing it and never be affected by the squabbles of the Segas, Sonys and Microsofts of the world.
Looking past the console wars, the sad news was in for the PC. Every executive we talked to has given up on our old, trusted friend. Titles like Quake III and Unreal Tournament made their biggest impact on consoles. Major PC titles like Team Fortress II and Sid Meier's Dinosaurs weren't even at the show. EA, long a successful publisher for PC and console, had a booth dominated by PlayStation2 titles that blared out from a three-story high monitor bank. The industry says that the consumer is not buying PC titles, and developers are flocking in droves to get into the next-generation of console development.
The most important exception to this, though, was the presence of online RPGs. Ultima Online 2, Shadowbane, Neverwinter Nights, and Anarchy Online all looked amazing. They show the path for the PC's survival. Perhaps this next round of consoles will shrink the PC market to a nub, but as broadband takes over the home, PCs become cheaper, and online games become better and better, people will return to their desktops. We hope. For now, if E3 is the barometer of a platform's importance, the PC is waning severely.
At the end of it all, we found ourselves in a long, philosophical conversation with some good friends of ours at a console development company (who asked to go unnamed). They agreed with our thoughts on the floor, but raised this question -- a question for which we have no answer. Does any of it matter? Sega, by all accounts, had the best E3 it's ever had. Sony had its worst. Nintendo might as well stop showing up, as it has in Japan. But a year from now, unless every financial prediction made by every paper-pusher in the industry is wrong, Nintendo will still be making monstrous revenues on five games a year, Sony will be outselling the Dreamcast by millions of units, and Sega will still be the console of choice only for the extreme hardcore. What does success at E3 win these companies -- and what cost failure? It's a question only you, the consumer, can answer.
Aaron John Loeb
Daily Radar's Big E3 Wrap Up
E3 is never what you expect it will be... or how David beat Goliath with a maraca.
This was to be the year of the PlayStation2. Everyone in the industry knew it. Last year, Sega had an amazing booth and plenty of industry support -- particularly from retailers -- and the overwhelming feeling on the floor was excitement about the Dreamcast. But in private conversations, developers from companies as large as EA and as small as Kalisto would shake their heads and mutter quietly, "it's good that they got one last great show before Sony destroys them."
Flash forward to this year and, while there were still a few people muttering the same thing about Sega's massive, exciting booth ("it's a good show, but it's their last"), the plurality of those we spoke to on the floor said things more like, "who knew Sony would blow it this badly?" You see, last year Sony looked untouchable. The PlayStation2 was technologically superior, it was backward compatible with the most successful console in the history of videogames, and it was being funded by the entire Sony Empire. Sega was billions in debt, big companies like EA and Square were refusing to support the Dreamcast, and the console just seemed too little, too late.
And Sega's message -- "it's about the games, stupid" -- sounded, a year ago, like the bleat of a lamb about to be slaughtered. Of course Sega would say that. Its technology was inferior, it hadn't had a presence in the marketplace for years, and everybody was pledging support to the PlayStation2 over a year before its release. But if there's one statement on earth that E3 2000 served to prove it is this: it is about the games. With titles as varied as Samba de Amigo, ShenMue, NFL 2K1 and Black and White, nearly all looking highly polished and just about to be released, the Sega booth was the hit of the show. People were crammed around monitors, playing games, shouting, laughing and generally enjoying themselves which, after all, is the point of our whole industry.
Sony, on the other hand, opened the show on Wednesday with a "super secret" press conference at which it told a crowd full of gamers that games are hardly the main goal of the PS2. Accenting digital entertainment, especially DVDs, Sony waited until late in its conference to have Phil Harrison, VP of Third Party Development, come out and tell the crowd about the games. Add to that an announcement of a $300 price point going against a $150 Dreamcast that will be entirely free with the Sega.com ISP, and the chinks in Sony's armor were obvious before the show floor even opened. And, as people filed out of the super secret event, they were treated to a Sega bar-b-que in the parking lot with live music and plenty of mockery for the electronics giant. It set the tone for the rest of the show. Sega's party in the parking lot extended to its big booth of fun, and the moribund tone of Sony's press conference seeped into its museumlike booth, where row after row of choppy games were ignored by the majority of attendees.
As several people we spoke to pointed out, it did not bode well for Sony's show that it chose to place PlayStation2s playing DVD movies at the front of its booth. Its high quality DVD playback abilities seem, in Sony's mind, to be the high point of the system. They might be right. Many of the games in Sony's booth were so far from completion they never should have been on the floor (we actually saw someone throw a controller down while playing one demo/slide show running at 5 frames per second). However, there were some bright spots. Capcom's Onimusha looked fun (though more than a bit derivative of Res Evil), Epic's Unreal Tournament on PS2 was much smoother and prettier than at GDC, and, of course, EA's games -- found only at EA's booth -- all looked great. The crown jewel of the show for PS2, though, was Metal Gear Solid 2. Even though it was only present in video form at the Konami booth, it was one of the most spectacular displays of game beauty ever to grace the halls of E3 and energized everyone who saw it.
Sony's show was certainly made difficult by the late release of its dev kits in the US. Most developers have only had the Tool, as it's called, since January. Four months isn't a long development cycle, and almost every developer we spoke to mentioned that the PS2 is a nightmare to work with. This hasn't helped Sony's cause, and it helped stoke the buzz for Microsoft's upcoming Xbox.
Microsoft's console had a strange presence at the show. There were a slew of banners hanging from ceilings, and the staircase up to the show floor was a giant Xbox ad, but at the big M's booth, there was only a demo movie attendees had to stand in line for. The behind closed doors Xbox demo we watched was dull, focusing mostly on the power of direct music. Of course, Microsoft can hardly be blamed for having no games to talk about on a platform that's still 18 months away, but if you're going to advertise your system all over the show, it's generally considered polite to actually bring the system. All that being said, most of the PS2 developers we spoke to mentioned Xbox as their hope for salvation. "Maybe Xbox will be easier to work with," was a common thread.
But if there's anyone who had a non-show at E3, it was Nintendo. Actually, non-show is too harsh, but the company's steadfast refusal to even talk about the next generation a full year after it announced its next-gen platform (Dolphin was unveiled at E3 last year) was peculiar to say the least. Nintendo's first- and second-party games looked, almost every one of them, to be great, but any effort to find third-party support elsewhere on the floor went unrewarded. In general, Nintendo appears to have lost any relevance in the "console war" as it will just keep on plugging away, making games that will sell millions of units on its platforms, drawing very little support away from other systems, and not even bothering to follow the generational cycles of other companies. While this is frustrating to news junkies like us, it does say a lot about the power of Nintendo. The company can do whatever it likes, make a fortune doing it and never be affected by the squabbles of the Segas, Sonys and Microsofts of the world.
Looking past the console wars, the sad news was in for the PC. Every executive we talked to has given up on our old, trusted friend. Titles like Quake III and Unreal Tournament made their biggest impact on consoles. Major PC titles like Team Fortress II and Sid Meier's Dinosaurs weren't even at the show. EA, long a successful publisher for PC and console, had a booth dominated by PlayStation2 titles that blared out from a three-story high monitor bank. The industry says that the consumer is not buying PC titles, and developers are flocking in droves to get into the next-generation of console development.
The most important exception to this, though, was the presence of online RPGs. Ultima Online 2, Shadowbane, Neverwinter Nights, and Anarchy Online all looked amazing. They show the path for the PC's survival. Perhaps this next round of consoles will shrink the PC market to a nub, but as broadband takes over the home, PCs become cheaper, and online games become better and better, people will return to their desktops. We hope. For now, if E3 is the barometer of a platform's importance, the PC is waning severely.
At the end of it all, we found ourselves in a long, philosophical conversation with some good friends of ours at a console development company (who asked to go unnamed). They agreed with our thoughts on the floor, but raised this question -- a question for which we have no answer. Does any of it matter? Sega, by all accounts, had the best E3 it's ever had. Sony had its worst. Nintendo might as well stop showing up, as it has in Japan. But a year from now, unless every financial prediction made by every paper-pusher in the industry is wrong, Nintendo will still be making monstrous revenues on five games a year, Sony will be outselling the Dreamcast by millions of units, and Sega will still be the console of choice only for the extreme hardcore. What does success at E3 win these companies -- and what cost failure? It's a question only you, the consumer, can answer.
Aaron John Loeb