This past week E3, the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, was held at the
LA Convention Center in Los Angeles. I was there and was quite surprised
with a lot of what I saw. However, before I get to the details of the show
I'd like to discuss some of the details that were revealed at the press
conferences held the day before the show began.
I arrived in LA last Tuesday, May 11th, and settled into my hotel room.
Tuesday evening was uneventful as my roommates and I basically just lounged
around. The next morning we were up bright and early. Our first
destination was the LA Theater where Nintendo was holding its pre E3 press
conference. There was a large crowd already waiting outside when my
associates and I arrived. We made our way into the theater, got seated,
and talked amongst ourselves while waiting for Nintendo of America's
President Howard Lincoln to come out and address the crowd. Mr. Lincoln
eventually made his way out onto the stage and began to speak. For about
half an hour or so he went on about Nintendo's premiere titles that would
be at E3, namely Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini, and Star
Wars: Episode I Racer. He also talked about the Pokemon phenomenon that is
fueling the brisk sales of Nintendo's recently released Gameboy Color
portable and he announced that a new, and limited, Nintendo 64 package
would soon go on sale. This package will contain a Nintendo 64 console and
the soon to be released Episode I Racer for $149.95. The most significant
news came towards the end of the conference. Lincoln announced, to the
surprise of everyone in attendance, that Nintendo had signed a one
billion-dollar agreement with IBM which will have IBM produce the CPU for
Nintendo's next console, codenamed "Dolphin". This chip will be a 400 MHz
CPU that will utilize IBM's 0.18 micron copper technology. The chip,
currently being called the "Gekko" processor, is an extension of IBM's
PowerPC architecture. The deal also leaves the door open for IBM chip
technology to be used in other Nintendo products.
Lincoln also announced a few of the other specs for "Dolphin". First and
foremost, Dolphin will be DVD based. This announcement brought cheers from
myself and the rest of those in attendance. Nintendo has finally realized
that cartridge based consoles aren't the way to go. Lincoln went on to say
that the graphics chip will be made by ArtX, Inc. of Palo Alto, CA, that it
will have a 200 MHz clock speed, and that it will have semiconductor
process 0.18 micron embedded DRAM technology. Furthermore, "Dolphin" will
have a system memory bandwidth of 3.2 GB/second and it will have enhanced
counterfeit protection technology that, according to Mr. Lincoln, will make
pirating "Dolphin" software virtually impossible. What I found a bit
surprising was the unabashed confidence that Mr. Lincoln had regarding
Nintendo's immediate future. He made some bold predictions such as stating
that he and Nintendo believe that Donkey Kong 64 will end up being the best
selling game of all time and that Nintendo 64 hardware sales are going to
rise. I think Mr. Lincoln and Nintendo may be underestimating their
competition.
As if all those announcements weren't enough, Lincoln went on to announce
an alliance with Matsushita Electric, best known for it's Panasonic brand
name, in which Matsushita will develop and supply the DVD medium and drive
for the "Dolphin". Finally, it was announced that the "Dolphin" is
scheduled to be released around the 2000 holiday season, but it wasn't made
clear whether that launch date was for Japan, the US, or both.
After the Nintendo press conference had concluded, my associates and I
headed back to the hotel to relax and to do nothing much. Around 4:30 that
afternoon, we departed for the Sega press conference that was being held at
a LA nightclub. The conference was set to start at six, and it was a
good thing that we left when we did because we got lost and didn't get
there until a little after six. Once we got past security, we went inside
and enjoyed the complimentary bar while we waited for the conference staff
to herd us all into the area where the actual conference would be held.
Once inside, we sat and talked for about five minutes and then a video
presentation began to play. It consisted a weatherman reporting from the
middle of what seemed to be a hurricane talking about a storm that was
heading for the LA area. As you might guess, he was referring to the
Dreamcast, but I thought this was clever, nonetheless. After the mock news
report, Sega of America's President Bernie Stolar, made his way out onto
stage.
Mr. Stolar began by announcing that Sega is fully committed to making
Dreamcast a huge success and as such, has instituted a marketing campaign
for North America and Europe that will cost approximately 200 million
dollars. Ads will appear on MTV, ESPN, as well as ESPN2 and several other
networks. After those announcements were made, we were treated to a video
presentation which showed footage from a multitude of Dreamcast games
including Sonic Adventure, NFL 2000, NBA 2000, Soul Calibur, Trickstyle,
Ready 2 Rumble, and Powerstone. Immediately following the presentation,
Bernie stated that the Dreamcast's graphics performance is four times
better than the fastest Pentium 2 and that Capcom's Powerstone, Konami's
Castlevania, and Namco's Soul Calibur would be available when the Dreamcast
launches on September 9th. Mr. Stolar said that fifteen titles would be
available when the Dreamcast launches and that by the end of the year
thirty titles would be on store shelves. The most significant announcement
though, was that the Dreamcast will come packaged with a 56k modem and will
retail for only $199. This brought lots of cheers from the crowd. Details
of Sega's Dreamcast website, which will interface with the modem, were also
divulged. Sega's Dreamcast site will have chat and conference capabilities
as well as an up to the minute sports ticker such as the one found on
Headline News.
Mr. Stolar then introduced Sega's Senior VP of marketing, Mr. Peter Moore.
Before Mr. Moore came out to address the crowd, Mr. Stolar said something
that I think really summed up Sega's philosophy. He said, "We're not a
kids company, we're not an electronics conglomerate, we're a gaming
company." I thought that hit the nail on the head. Mr. Moore soon came
out and began to describe, in great detail, just how Sega is going to
market the Dreamcast. I was extremely impressed by his presentation. Mr.
Moore also announced that Sega will be the premiere sponsor of this year's
MTV Video Music Awards and that the monetary commitment to MTV was around
six million dollars. Last, but not least, Mr. Moore announced that Sega
had reached a deal with Pepsi that will put Dreamcast ads, along with Pepsi
ads, on 11,870 screens in movie theaters across the US.
The conference concluded with another video presentation showing Dreamcast
titles. I left this conference thoroughly impressed with Sega's marketing
campaign and their lineup of titles. In fact, I was so impressed that
yesterday I went out to my local Electronics Boutique and pre-purchased a
Dreamcast. The one disappointment of the conference was the fact that
neither Mr. Stolar nor Mr. Moore addressed the Dreamcast's abysmal sales in
Japan. The most recent sales figures I've seen have shown that the
Playstation is outselling the Dreamcast in Japan by a nearly 4:1 margin.
That has to change and I hope that Sega has an aggressive plan to bring
that change about.
By the time my associates and I had gotten back to our hotel, it was around
10pm and we were all tired. We played some Nintendo 64 games for a little
while and then went to sleep. The next day began bright and early around
6:30am. The show wasn't going to start until 10am, but we all got up as
early as we did so that we could attend the keynote speech that preceded
the show. The speaker was a Mr. Don Tapscott who is the author of several
books on the Internet and technology, the Chairman of the Alliance for
Converging Technologies, and the President of New Paradigm Learning
Company. His speech lasted for approximately one hour and touched on the
effect of videogames and technology on our culture, economy, and society.
He was extremely articulate and had some very interesting things to say.
Among the highlights of his speech was the portion where he addressed the
current assertion by much of the media that videogames contribute to youth
violence. In a very simple presentation using straightforward graphs, he
showed that over the past ten years videogames sales have risen
dramatically, while youth crime and violence have decreased. In a nutshell,
there's a negative correlation between videogames and youth crime.
After the keynote had concluded, the show was officially opened and I
ventured out onto the floor to see what all the major companies had to
offer. Instead of giving a day by day rundown of what I did, I'm going to
go over the highlights of the show in a booth by booth breakdown.
I'll start with Nintendo's booth. Nintendo's big titles: Perfect Dark,
Donkey Kong 64, Jet Force Gemini, and Stars Wars: Episode I Racer ranged
from above average to mediocre. Perfect Dark, the pseudo sequel to the
smash hit Goldeneye, looked worse than it did at last year's E3 as it was
extremely pixilated and the collision detection was horrible. Donkey Kong
64 looked no more impressive than Nintendo's previous 3D platformers,
although it was fun to play. Jet Force Gemini, a shooter, had bland,
blocky graphics and monotonous gameplay. Finally, Episode I Racer looked
good and it was fun to play, but it didn't have some gameplay elements that
I felt it should've. Instead of being a combat racer, where you could race
around a myriad of tracks while shooting your opponents with an assortment
of cool weaponry, it was just a pure racer. There's nothing wrong with
pure racing games, but I think a Star Wars racing game needs some weaponry.
There was also video footage of several upcoming N64 titles such as Kirby
2, Excitebike 64, and Super Mario RPG 2. Excitebike 64 and Kirby 2 looked
very good, but Super Mario RPG 2 looked worse than Super Mario RPG 1 and in
fact, looked like it was a Super Nintendo game. Not good. The most
impressive and noteworthy thing in Nintendo's booth by far was Capcom's
Resident Evil 2. The game itself wasn't that impressive, but what was
impressive was the Full Motion Video intro to the game. FMV intros are
standard fare in Playstation game, but up until now no one had really
thought it was possible to put an FMV intro onto a cartridge. The intro
doesn't look as good as the Resident Evil 2 intro on the Playstation, but
it was still amazing considering it was on a cartridge. There were so huge
Pokemon displays as well, but overall Nintendo had a pitiful showing. The
worst disappointment of all though, was the absence of Metroid 64.
Absolutely inexcusable.
Next up is Sony. Like Nintendo, Sony had some big name titles at the show
that ultimately failed to deliver. Spyro the Dragon 2, Um Jammer Lammy
(the sequel to Parappa the Rapper), Gran Turismo 2, and Ape Escape were all
there. With the exception of Um Jammer Lammy, which I personally don't
like but recognize that it isn't a bad game, all of the aforementioned
titles were average, at best. Spyro 2 looked like and played just like its
predecessor. Gran Turismo 2's graphics were extremely grainy and there
were only a scant few cars to choose from. Ape Escape didn't look very
good, either and its gameplay was boring and repetitive. I understand that
many of these titles are still in development, but they should've looked
and played better than they did. What was impressive was the pyramid in
the middle of Sony's booth that had several screens on it. Those screens
were showing a few different Playstation 2 demos. When I first saw the
Gran Turismo demo that they had running my jaw dropped. I have never, ever
seen graphics as impressive as that. Not in an arcade, not on a PC, not
anywhere. I was absolutely floored. Aside from the Gran Turismo demo,
there was a demo of face that showed off Sony's new "Emotion Chip"
technology and a cube demo. I do have to say that Final Fantasy 8 and the
new R-Type game looked very good, but aside from them and the Playstation 2
demos there was nothing in Sony's booth that impressed me at all.
It's unfortunate that Nintendo and Sony's showings were so pathetic, but
Sega's booth made up for it. The assortment of Dreamcast games and their
quality was phenomenal. From Midway's quirky and extremely entertaining
boxing game Ready 2 Rumble, to Namco's weapons based fighter Soul Caliber,
to Capcom's Marvel vs. Capcom and Powerstone the Sega booth was chock full
of quality games. Other Dreamcast games that blew me away include Sega's
wonderful fishing simulation Get Bass that was made even better by the
special fishing rod controller that it utilized. The two Sega Sports
titles at the show, NFL 2000 and NBA 2000, looked marvelous and played
beautifully. Sega Rally 2 was also there and yours truly competed in a Sega
Rally game with three other individuals that was being played via the
Dreamcast Network in Japan. Sonic Adventure was there too, of course, and
it looked great. The only problems with it were the camera angles. They
constantly changed. I would've liked a fixed camera that stayed right
behind Sonic at all times. There were a few stinkers there too, like Crave
Entertainment's Aerodancing, but all in all, the titles shown were
wonderful. I also really liked Atlus' first person corridor game Maken X
and Sega's Dynamite Cop, which was a lot like Final Fight and Streets of
Rage except with better than arcade quality graphics. Also, Sega's arcade
shooter House of the Dead 2 was there and it looked great. The Sega gun
that works with HOTD2 wasn't there, which hurt the experience of playing
the game a bit. I can't forget to mention Yu Suzuki's new game Shen Mue.
Shen Mue is an action/adventure game and it was playable, but I couldn't
get a real good feel for the game because it was so incomplete. However,
what I did see looked excellent. Shen Mue will make use of the Dreamcast's
internal clock, which I think is very cool. If you play Shen Mue at night
it'll be nighttime in the game, and if you play Shen Mue during the day
it'll be daytime in the game. As for the stock Dreamcast controller, it
was very comfortable to hold, and the VMS (Virtual Memory System) was very
cool. The VMS plugs into the back of the Dreamcast controller and
functions a lot like a memory card, with a few other major features. The
VMS has an LCD screen of its own and interfaces with most Dreamcast games.
A good example of how this interaction works is illustrated by Midway's
Ready 2 Rumble. While playing Ready 2 Rumble I was able to glance down at
the VMS screen and see how many punches I had landed with my character's
left and right hands as well as how accurate my punching was. Very, very
cool. Sega also has a slick flight stick coming out as well as a
microphone plug in for the Dreamcast controller that will work with several
of their upcoming titles. Several other peripheral companies such as
InterAct, Nyko, and Mad Catz will have their own Dreamcast peripherals
coming out.
The long and the short of it is that Sega blew the competition away. Their
own Dreamcast games as well as 3rd party Dreamcast games were very
impressive with the exception of a few titles. Sony and Nintendo didn't
even come remotely close. I think Sega has an excellent chance to make the
Dreamcast a huge success if they can execute their excellent marketing
strategy. Also, if the initial crop of Dreamcast software is any
indication, we're all in for some major treats. First generation software
is never very reflective of a system's capabilities so developers really
haven't been able to tap into the Dreamcast's full power just yet. There's
a lot to look forward to as far as Dreamcast software is concerned and I
think that Sega has a bright future ahead of them in North America. The
horribly low sales in Japan have to be addressed, but I have confidence
that they will be. Prior to E3, I was a jaded former Sega fanatic that
wasn't too optimistic about Sega or the Dreamcast. After E3 had concluded
I was, and still am, gung-ho about the Dreamcast. If it hadn't been for
Sega, this year's E3 would've been a huge disappointment for me, but as it
was, Sega was the show and what a hell of a show it was.