Gamespot FTW

I have to give a big kudos to Gamespot for providing, as far as I'm concerned, the best e3 coverage this year. Sure, other websites have also been adding their fair share of videos, but as far as I'm concerned, for sheer ease of use and video quality, their coverage has trumped the competition.

Sony, one and only?

Alright, bar a couple of hiccups with Gamespot, I was able to watch Sony's e3 2010 press conference in full.

First off, I don't know where they think they're going with the 3d thing. It's almost like they're blissfully unaware of how prohibitively expensive 3d screens are. As has been said, too, a lot of people will have only recently forked out for a hd set, and it's a good bet they're not planning another upgrade anytime soon.

I don't know who's running the show over at Sony, but until they get their heads outta their arses, they're going to lose a lot more money if they're banking on 3d selling Playstations. I see a big shakeup in that company in the months to follow, because sooner or later, they're going to start running out of money to lose.

That said, their Sorcery demo, utilising the Playstation Move, impressed the hell out of me. I really liked the look of that. I came away more impressed with Move than with Microsoft's Kinect, to be honest, if just because Microsoft's demonstration of their adventures game showcased some seriously nasty lag. If I jump IRL, I want to see my avatar in the game jump immediately.

Outside of Sorcery though, Move looks just like what Nintendo introduced with the Wiimote so many years ago. That's not good.

Nintendo are still well ahead this generation, and all e3 has really proven is that Microsoft and Sony are much more jealous of Nintendo having tapped that casual market than they'd ever admit.

Nintendo, sigh

I'm at the arse end of watching Nintendo's e3 2010 press conference, and I put it like that because, as per the usual, their press conferences bore me to tears. They've made so much money, both with the Wii and the DS, that I'd think the least they could do is hire someone who speaks tangible English (and I don't mean that annoying Reggie fella).

Ok, so in a word, they're boring.

That said, Nintendo are owning this generation. If there's anything to be gained from Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's Playstation Move, it's that they want to be Nintendo.... sooo bad. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

Their botched Zelda demo made me laugh though; "please, everyone, turn off your wireless devices". How many fucking devices these days aren't wireless ones?

Their upcoming 3DS will sell a gazillion copies, but I'm not terribly enthusiastic about it. That's not to say it's not a great, great idea, but there's just no place for it in my life. I work, rest and play. At work, I'm working, at rest, I'm sleeping, and at play, I'm either on the pc, watching a movie in the home theatre, or playing Rock Band on my ps3. That's pretty much 95% of my life, right there. Sad, I know.

So yeah, much of it sucked, but there was one bit of excellent news; there's a new NBA Jam coming, and it's coming for the Wii. In the absence of it also showing up on the 360 or the ps3, you can rest assured I'll definitely be buying that on release day.

Alright, now it's time to watch Sony's conference. Wish me luck.

Microsoft Kinect

I just finished watching Microsoft's 2010 E3 Press Conference (thanks to Gamespot).

There's no denying that I'm going to buy their new motion-capture peripheral, Kinect, the day it comes out. I will even preorder that sucker.

As always though, I'm concerned about the lag. It was very evident during some of the demos that they played at the show, most noticeably the adventures pack where the guy was jumping over and crouching under barriers, and collecting coins. Compared to how brilliantly Nintendo did table tennis in Wii Sports Resort, it's positively embarassing.

Still, it all looks smoking hot, and coupled with Rock Band 3, I anticipate actually having some games to play this coming Christmas. There's a first.

Oh yeah, and for anyone who doesn't know, at the end of the conference Microsoft announced a new, slimmer 360, and then gave everybody in the audience one. While this was obviously just designed to curry favour with the attending press, I question the need. Really, if you have the money and/or connections to be able to afford to actually be at that conference, it occurs to me you should be among the last on the planet eligible for such a handout.

Being an Australian consumer pretty much sucks!

I'm going to give you a great example of where I'm going with this one.

Among other purchases, one of the titles I recently picked up from Amazon UK was Surrogates on Blu-Ray, and I got it for £8.50. The Aussie dollar is currently fetching £0.57, which means that, in my currency, I paid approximately $14.91AU for it.

The only problem is, Surrogates is still selling for $40.00AU over here, and I put that in italics because that's pretty much the price it released at.

So yeah, the situation blows over here. I could hit you with a lot more, like how corrupt the banks and the government are, but you get the point.

Out of curiosity, the Aussie dollar would have to drop from buying £0.57 to buying only £0.21 before I would be better off just getting it from a local store. I don't think it's ever been that low.

iTunes, I'm so over you!

I bought a shiny new third-generation Ipod Touch to replace my ageing old first-generation Touch about a week ago, and iTunes has been nothing but a headache ever since.

My iTunes install on my desktop would refuse to sync across any of my applications. I tried replacing the cable, restoring my device, deleting and redownloading individual apps... nothing worked.

It's fair to say that my first two hours with it were met with nothing but frustration and purchase regret, and that's a really bad way to get started.

I ended up installing iTunes on my laptop, and at first, everything was ok. It would actually sync across my purchased games to the device, which was exactly what I wanted.

That lasted a couple of days. Then it would never actually finish sync'ing. Replacing the cable (again) has fixed the problem, but I must admit, I'm starting to find myself wondering just what the next problem with this shit is going to be.

Apple's hardware is great. Truly, very great. It looks good, it's well-designed, fast, comfortable... all in all, it's great to own. Unfortunately, the software team are definitely letting the side down, and it's made what should've been a pleasurable experience a right pain in the arse.