After spending the last two days with F5 in constant work-out during Engadget and Joystiq’s live blogs, I’ve come up with the summary of what the Big Three (Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft) said during their keynotes — in terms everybody can understand.
Microsoft
Hey, we’ve got lots of games that look pretty and will be hits with hard-core gamers…oh, and we’re going to make an attempt to cash in on Nintendo’s “causal gaming audience” with a useless SingStar clone, community “simple” games, and an update to the dashboard that allows Miis — I mean, Avatars. Oh, but hey, did we tell you that Netflix is going to totally stream through your Xbox? But it’ll cost you for the Live membership and Netflix…each month…so…you can spend the $50 price cut for the Pro system on monthly memberships. And Final Fantasy is coming to x360, so suck it, Sony.
Nintendo
Hey families, did you buy a Wii or DS? Great, thanks for the money. We don’t really have anything to show that’s anything good, soooo, here’s Animal Crossing with a microphone, an update to the motion controller, and watered down Grand Theft Auto and Spore games for the DS. And a balance board game that might be good, maybe.
Sony
Wow, we were soooooo wrong about being successful with the PS3, but now, we’re going to bring everything you can do on the XBOX 360 to the PS3, and we’ve got some other good games coming out, we think. Oooh, but did you know we’re still making games for the PS2, cause we are, but you can’t play them on the new cheaper PS3 with more storage capabilities…cause we’re kinda iffy on the whole “backwards compatibility” stuff.
Penny-Arcade may explain it in less words, though: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/7/16/
