E3 2006: Wii For The Win!
Well, E3 is over and from the sounds of it Wii clearly came out as the system that stole the show. The Playstation 3 had a very mediocre showing. Well, let me rephrase that, nothing on the PS3 was extremely outstanding or as head and shoulders above the Xbox 360. Luckily for Microsoft, nobody is buying into the whole 1080p garbage that Sony is spewing. Ironically, most developers aren’t even shooting for 1080p, since 720p/1080i looks great and there is no great visual difference. Also, I found it very amusing that Grand Tourismo: HD’s demo ran in 1080p, but nobody was too impressed by it. It didn’t look as good or any better than Project Gotham 3. It just looked like a highres version of GT4 with better lighting.
The 360 had a solid showing it sounds like. Gears of War was the best looking game of the show and from the reaction of the people who played it, it’s a lot of fun. Cool. Also, the Halo 3 teaser running in realtime was purdy(and it pretty much killed Xbox Live for a day). I’m actually really excited about Halo 3 and a lot of other people are as well. Halo 3 and GTA 4 in the same year? 2007 is going to be a good year for the 360.
Now, the winner of the show…. Wii. Nintendo had a very Disneyesque presentation of the Wii. It was filled with magic and excitement. The games were fun looking and it really conveyed the sense of excitement that Wii will bring to gaming. I didn’t hear any real complaints about the graphics for the Wii, so I guess it’s pretty enough for hardcore gamers. The reaction to actually playing the controller was a bit mixed, but nothing horrible. I think expectations were maybe a bit too high for it, but I think overall Wii had a fantastic showing to both the people who went to E3 and those who just watched vids on the internet.
