Almost six years ago at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Nintendo Co unveiled what would eventually become known as the Wii. However, the Japanese gaming giant didn’t show off the new console’s distinctive motion-sensing capabilities until later that year at the Tokyo Game Show.
Nintendo won’t be such a tease at this year’s E3.
After two years of shrinking Wii sales, the gamemaker will fully raise the curtain on the Wii’s successor at the gaming industry’s annual convention in downtown Los Angeles this week.
Nintendo has remained silent about just what the platform will do, but gamers are anticipating features like high-definition graphics and touchscreen controllers.
“What’s interesting about it is that it’s a platform that seems much more oriented to the core gamer, in terms of its capabilities and specifications,” said Ken Levine, the Irrational Games creative director who will tear into E3 with Bioshock Infinite, an airy in-the-clouds follow-up to the stylish undersea saga Bioshock, published by 2K Games.
NEW SONY DEVICE
Sony Corp will try to rebound from the embarrassment of a massive security breach that recently crippled the PlayStation Network, affecting more than 100 million online accounts. Sony plans to introduce several new PlayStation 3 titles, as well as detail the name, price and sale date of a new handheld device code-named Next Generation Portable (NGP).
John Koller, director of PlayStation hardware marketing, said the NGP would be slightly larger than the PlayStation Portable and would feature a touchscreen, touchpad, two cameras and an accelerometer, meaning it can react to motion. It will also be able to connect over cellphone networks and Wi-Fi hotspots and use GPS location-tracking technology.
“The NGP is not a singular experience as a lot of other portable and mobile devices are,” Koller said. “There’s augmented reality, location-based and social gaming experiences. All those things add up to a much greater whole than what we think is available on the market or will be on the market over the next four to five years.”
Following last year’s flashy Cirque du Soleil production to introduce Kinect, the motion-sensing camera system for Xbox 360, Microsoft Corp will likely adopt a different tactic from Nintendo and Sony and keep the focus on new games instead of new devices. The gaming industry’s current champion hasn’t announced any plans to debut a new console.
The most explosive battle for hype will involve Electronic Arts Inc versus Activision Blizzard Inc, which will simultaneously use E3 as a theater for their military shoot-’em-up franchises.
Activision aims to continue to dominate with the globe-trotting Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, while Electronic Arts hopes to capture interest with Battlefield 3.
“These are the type of heavyweight fights that I think are good for customers and the marketplace,” EA Games president Frank Gibeau said. “It brings a lot of attention, gets people excited and gives customers a choice. We like our chances. We’re an underdog, for sure. They’re the big kids on the block, but we’re giving it everything we’ve got.”
MORE GAMES
Other games scheduled to be on display on the show floor include the third-person alien blaster Gears of War 3, sweeping role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, moody Dark Knight sequel Batman: Arkham City, ambitious zombie slasher Dead Island, virtual demolition derby Twisted Metal and violent shape-shifting adventure Prototype 2.
“E3 is still one of the largest showcases for all games out there,” said Jonathan Lim, a Radical Entertainment assistant producer currently working on Prototype 2, published by Activision. “For us to be able to have such a large presence is really rewarding.”
Several unannounced games are rumored to be making their debut at this year’s E3, including a 3D Super Mario game for the Nintendo 3DS, new installments of choreography game Dance Central and supernatural thriller Alan Wake and a Star Wars title that utilizes Xbox 360’s Kinect system to transform players’ movements into the powers of The Force.
The convention will also serve as a celebration for the gaming industry, which has been bouncing back in the wake of the recession and rise of inexpensive social and casual games.
The NPD Group, a research firm that tracks sales, said last month that US sales of consoles, software and accessories were up 20 percent over last year to US$961.2 million.
MISSING OUT
While mobile gamemakers like Gameloft and EA Mobile will be at E3, casual gaming giants like Rovio and Zynga, the creators of Angry Birds and FarmVille, as well as Apple Inc, aren’t expected to have a presence at the show.
“I think the mood at this year’s E3 will be healthy,” said Adam Sessler, editorial director and co-host of G4’s X-Play. “The gaming industry has been wandering in the forest a little bit in regards to this whole causal gaming thing. This might be a year of refocusing on the style of games and attention to the audience that has supported the industry.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day