UNSCleric.com

It’s that time again.  For the second year in a row, E3 is being held in it’s new mid-July position, but unlike last year, it’s going back to its original roots somewhat, and is being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  Instead of tens of thousands in attendance like in 2006, the ESA is only expecting 4,000 individuals this year thanks to the changes that have been made to what was the regular E3.  This site has gone over the politics of E3 and how it was transformed in the past.

This year seems to be a much bigger year than E3 2007, and much more organized for the press that will be attending as well.  E3 2008 runs from July 14th-17th, and Microsoft will be holding its Press Briefing on the 14th.  More details on this will be posted within the week.  Xbox.com also has its own E3 2008 Page ready to go.

Related:
07.30.06: E3 2006 Was The Final E3, EVER.
07.31.06: ESA Confirms The Death of E3
08.20.06: Another Confirmation of Sony Behind E3’s Death

Update: Here’s some information on when the press conferences will be.

Monday July 14th
1PM ET/Noon Central Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Half-hour pre-show followed by the entire Microsoft Press Conference – live and commercial free on-air and online.

6PM ET – EA Press Conference - Live streaming coverage on G4tv.com

Tuesday July 15th
12PM ET Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Live on-air and online streaming, commercial free coverage of the Nintendo Press conference
2:30PM ET. - Live on-air and online streaming, commercial free coverage of the Sony Press conference
5:30PM ET – Ubisoft Press Conference - Live streaming coverage on G4tv.com

For the last few days I had really started thinking about finally doing another, and here it is. I threw this show together in the past few hours more as a warm-up than anything else, I wanted to see if I knew how to actually get a working blogcast out there and have the sound be ok and stuff like that. Things will only get better from here as I get more comfortable and actually prepare for my next show.

Download: UNSCast #2: Halo 3 Leaked

Mentioned in the show:
UNSCast #1 - The Death of E3 (7.31.06)
Halo 3
Halo 3’s Hype Finale
Halo 3 Marketing
Sony Advertises Halo 3 at PS3 Kiosk
The Halography: 9/18/07
Circuit City/Sony Lawsuit

Via Wired.com -

It’s hard to believe, but every so often the developers at E3 forget that they’re talking to a room full of journalists and they say something that they probably shouldn’t.

A developer was demonstrating her team’s multiplatform game for myself and two other journalists, both of whom happened to have been from Xbox-specific outlets. She jokingly asked if it was ok that we were going to see the Wii version, and the two guys chucklingly assured her that yeah, that was fine.

Picking up the controls, she began sorting through the debug menu to get to the bit of the game that she actually wanted to show us, making idle chitchat as she did so.

“Of course this will be on the 360, too. We love the 360. Hoo, we love it.” Pause as she waited for the demo to load. “We love the Wii, too, it’s a lot of fun. Playstation, pfffffffft. Gah.” One of the Xbox guys laughs at that and she goes on to say how hard it is to “get anything to run on that box.”

At that point, the demo was ready to go, and she began to put the game through its paces for us. Another moment of unguarded E3 honesty.

When you see the headline, “We hate working on the PS3“, it comes as no surprise, as the PlayStation brand has always been the least friendly to work on. 

(Thanks to DavidGX who sent this in)
—–

Engadget has run an article detailing exactly what I said would happen last summer when the ESA killed E3 due to pressure from companies like Sony and EA.

Dear ESA,

We’ve been down in SoCal for E3 since Tuesday, and now that the show is all closed up and the 3,000 industry pros and journalists invited to attend are heading home, we can only ask ourselves one thing: what the hell happened to E3? We knew full well coming into this thing that the mammoth, gonzo interactive entertainment spectacle of years past may have been lost to the ages, but the hollow husk of a show you guys replaced it with is drab, depressing, and generally disorganized. In short, we’re totally bummed.

E3 used to be our favorite week of the year — the trade show nerds dreamt of attending. You knew it was E3 season as GameStop and EB clerks the nation over began to claw tooth and nail for even the slightest chance at getting a pass to a show which has since been reduced to four rows of HDTVs in a janky hangar, and what amounts to a shuttle bus tour of Santa Monica’s five-star hotels (where exhibiting companies set up shop). It was kind of like seeing a band 20 years past its prime — it’s somehow capable of making you wonder what you ever saw in them in the first place.

So you tell us, were the cost cutting measures that led to the show’s meltdown worth it? Because as far as we’re concerned, something is really wrong when G4TV has a vastly larger floor show presence than Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft combined. For an industry that’s larger and more powerful than ever, we can’t understand how last year’s line to play the Wii managed to be larger than the entire 2007 show. No one at E3 feels like a rock star anymore. So we’re spilling a 40 on the ground for Kentia Hall, $20m booths, throngs of costumed nerds, and gamers having the time of their lives while we all felt vindicated for loving video games all these years — even if only for a moment.

Your friends,
Engadget

P.S. -Just in case you’ve already forgotten, remember what last year’s E3 looked like? Here, check it out:

• Microsoft’s E3 booth tour
• Nintendo’s E3 booth tour
• Sony’s E3 booth tour
• E3: South hall walkthrough
• E3: Kentia hall walkthrough

And now compare it to this:

Look as Joystiq.com’s editors try and get the truth out of Sony execs, just reading the back and forth will give you a headache.

Dave Karraker of Sony Computer Entertainment of America has contacted Joystiq to give us clarification on the story that would have made us believe Sony had truly lost its mind once and for all. The fun never ends, does it?

Karraker says the quotes from David Reeves are not accurate. He explains that if they had lowered the price in Europe, that territory would have run out of their current inventory by the end of July. He says in a statement, “As announced this week, SCEA’s product offering in North America consists of a 80GB PS3 available in August at $599 and a 60GB PS3 available now for $499. We have will have ample supplies of both models to meet the needs of our consumers for the foreseeable future.”

Update 1: There are some serious conflicting reports going on at the moment. We’re working on answers while still trying to cover E3 the best we can.

Update 2: As you may have seen in this clip about 1:45 in, Kaz Hirai says “The $499 price adjustment that we did for the 60 GB version for the American market, we’re no longer in production for that product. So once that product is gone from the retailers shelves, then we’re back to the $599 SKU only, so it’s not like we have a two price strategy here in the U.S. market, which we found early on consumers react most to just having one SKU as opposed to two.” So, we’re attempting to get some clarification. You’ll know when we do.

Update 3: According to Karraker, “The 60GB PS3 will be available in North America for $499 until supplies of that unit are depleted. We have ample inventory to meet the immediate needs of consumers in this territory for several months to come. We won’t be making any further announcements regarding our hardware offerings in the North America at this time.” In our opinion, it’s a touch disingenuous for Sony to just now be bringing this information to light, even though Karraker goes on to insist that this is not a bait-and-switch. If that’s the truth, why make it seem like the company was returning to a two-SKU strategy when that was clearly just temporary?

Update 4: We got this clarified statement from Karraker, who said “The 60GB PS3 will be available in North America for $499 until supplies of that unit are depleted. We have ample inventory to meet the immediate needs of consumers in this territory for several months to come. We won’t be making any further announcements regarding our PS3 model hardware strategy in North America until the 60GB model is exhausted and market conditions are evaluated.”

Basically, the PS3 is doing so horrible in the USA, that they have cut the price until they get rid of the huge back-up of unsold PS3s that are wasting space in everybody’s warehouses.  Once they have gotten enough people to buy into the system due to the hyped-up ”price-cut” and got rid of their overstock, they’re going to go back to only offering the $600 model, this time bundled with an old game and 20gb more space.  It’s this kind of garbage that makes people wish Sony would leave the gaming industry, and have a more honest company come compete, a company that would try and compete using fun and games, rather than lies and misinformation.  This commenter on Joystiq summed it up well too.

Related: Sony Scams Continue - January 17th, 2007

Update: Video of Kaz Hirai admitting the 60gb PS3 is no longer in production.

“Well, again, just from a hardware perspective, the 499 dollar price adjustment that we did for the 60 GB version, for the american market, uh, we’re no longer in production for that product, so  once that product is gone from the retailer shelves, then we’re back to the $599 SKU only, so it’s not like we have a two price strategy here in the US market.”

There is a demo for both Ace Combat 6 and Stuntman: Ignition.

There’s also another over-priced Guitar Hero II song pack available:

Guitar Hero Track Pack 4
Price: 500 Points
Availability: Not available in Asia
Dash Details: Wanna Be Sedated as made famous by The Ramones, Smoke on the Water as made famous by Deep Purple, You’ve Got Another Thing Coming as made famous by Judas Priest,

There is also a free update for Texas Hold ‘em, that includes the addition of Xbox Live Vision Camera support.  Other features of the update include the following:

· Improved usability such as the addition of Custom Match Lists, which allows gamers to view and select which available Custom Match game they would like to join.

· Improved rich presence in the game, allowing players to not only see what their friends are up to, but also if they just won that big pot!

· Improved matchmaking and user results.

· Scoring and screens are more readable than before.

New premium downloadable content allows players to customize the in-game environment, and access new gamerpics and themes

There are also a handful of trailers available, from games like Blacksite: Area 51, and The Bourne Conspiracy.  The entire Microsoft Press Conference is also available in six parts, in high-definition.

Just moments ago at the Konami press briefing, this occured: 
Silent Hill V.  The game features a soldier home from a war who is searching for his missing son. As often seems to be the case, this missing person decides to the best place to run to is Silent Hill. Akira Yamaoka will return to provide a brand new mind-bending soundtrack. Konami promises more news to come.

Like the Microsoft’s briefing last night, there weren’t any major surprises or anything ground-breaking shown in either conference.  All three companies seem to feel (or at least want to look) comfortable with their positions right now in this generation.  Sony obviously isn’t completely comfortable, due to the early price-drop, and them focusing mainly on 2008 during their briefing.  I think Sony knows trying to compete this fall is a lost cause, and have moved on to hyping up the games they have coming farther out.  Everyone seems surprised that Hideo Kojima announced that this is his final Metal Gear game, and that this will be the finale of the series, he said that would be the case years ago…

Anyway, Nintendo also had an on-par solid showing.  Mario Galaxy gets an 11/12 release date along with the announcement of Mario Kart Wii and some other cool looking innovative Wii titles and hardware (i.e. the Wii Zapper peripheral comes to mind for shooters. Supposedly, it will have 8 unique “moves” associated with it for shooters).

Sony also announced that Unreal Tournament III would be a timed-exclusive to the PS3, with the Xbox 360 seeing it in early 2008.  This is most likely due to Microsoft arguing with Epic about allowing PC content on Live (which PS3 is allowing) and because Epic does not want to compete with Halo 3, I don’t blame them, it would kill their sales potential on the Xbox 360.

I have yet to watch the Killzone 2 or MGS4 trailers, I’ll update this post when I get to them.

Here you will find the Halo 3 E3 2007 trailer, the Live-Action Halo video, & Halo Wars gameplay footage.

Halo: Arms Race (Neil Blomkamp, WETA, Bungie)

Halo Wars E3 2007 Gameplay Footage

E3 2007 Halo 3 Trailer

There’s a media blowout going on over at Bungie.net

While September is still off in the distance, tonight, a small part of the wait is over. The Halo 3 E3 Trailer, a visual and aural presentation destined to eradicate your senses and whip you into a frenzy is available for download below. Additionally, the trailer will appear on Xbox Live Marketplace. 

Halo 3 E3 2007 Trailer
Halo 3 E3 Trailer HD WMV
Halo 3 E3 Trailer Medium WMV
Halo 3 E3 Trailer Small WMV

Chances are you saw the Halo 3-themed Xbox 360 be announced (we’ll have much more on that tomorrow), and here’s the HDMI-equipped Xbox below.

The Premium Xbox 360 - Halo 3 Edition
”An authentic Spartan green and gold finish and comes with matching Xbox 360 Wireless Controller, 20GB Hard Drive, Headset, Play & Charge Kit, and exclusive Halo 3 Gamer Pics and Theme available via Xbox LIVE download.” Available this September.

The Arbiter and Master Chief fighting side by side here on Earth.  The trailer seemed to shown a scene where Master Chief grabs Arbiter by the neck and gets in his face.  Couldn’t quite make out all the details with all the chaos that was G4TV’s “coverage”.  More campaign screenshots here.

Halo: Arms Race
WMV HD Large
WMV Medium
WMV Small

A collaboration between Bungie Studios, director Neill Blomkamp, WETA Workshop and Origami Digital LLC, brings the first digital short depicting humanity’s struggle to save Earth.

I first debuted Neill Blomkamp’s work here on UNSCleric.com on August 9th, 2006.  Click here to see one of his previous video shorts.

Also, on an unrelated note: New Xbox 360 Wireless Controllers will be available in new colors, pink, dark blue and light blue, in October.  Sonic The Hedgehog and Golden Axe are now available on the Xbox Live Arcade now as well, they are 400 points each.  An E3 2007 section for game trailers has also appeared too.

Overall, I think the show went good.  A few things that people did not expect were announced, like Viva Pinata coming to Windows, and an Halo 3 Xbox 360 coming this September.

It didn’t start out too well though, besides the opening with Corporeal playing the Halo theme, that was impressive.  The fact that Microsoft didn’t announce any price-drops shows that they are very confident in their position right now.  Instead of cutting the price, Peter Moore went on a several minute info-rant on how Xbox 360 is dominating both the PS3 and the Wii when you look at the cold, hard numbers (and when you don’t count Japan’s sales figures).

Microsoft and the Xbox team are obviously not afraid of the competition right now, or at least aren’t showing any fear with their business tactics.  The fact that the Blu-Ray exclusive Disney studio is now going to provide all their content to Xbox Live in high-definition is another hit to Sony, and this isn’t the first BR-friendly studio to jump ship, Lions Gate Films did the same thing a few months ago.

Overall, the show didn’t have many surprises, and the surprises that were there, were just kind of odd (the Halo 3 edition Xbox 360 and that live-action Halo video for example).  It was an above-average show, and didn’t kill any of Microsoft’s momentum moving into late 2007, but it could have been a little bit better.  However, Microsoft can afford to have a conference that is on-par with people’s expectations, Sony cannot.

Microsoft has left themselves open for Sony to “win” this year’s E3.  Sony is already in the news constantly due to the price-drop, if Sony goes for a complete shock-and-awe campaign at tomorrow morning’s conference, they could steal this year’s E3 as far as hype goes.  Microsoft has already won as far as fall 2007 goes, and I believe Peter Moore drilled that home tonight when detailing the historic sales numbers, and what the Xbox 360 has to offer gamers this fall.

Tomorrow morning we have the Sony and Nintendo’s press conference (starting at 11am central time), so we’ll see what those two companies have to offer then.  I’ll be posting a recap and analysis of those conferences later in the afternoon tomorrow when all the dust has settled.

There is also a demo for Blue Dragon now available, along with a free E3 2007 picture pack and theme, and a E3 2007 Halo Wars picture pack and theme, we’ll be seeing more of that game shortly.