Can the Big Three game companies stay relevant in the age of “Angry Birds”? At a time when cheap, high-quality smartphone games are making accidental gamers of millions, console makers Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft gathered at the annual E3 conference, known as the Cannes of video games, this week in Los Angeles. The bold new ideas they offered track dual themes: balancing convenience against experiences no other company can deliver.
Nintendo unveils Wii U tablet
Converting regular folks to gamers is traditionally Nintendo’s turf, and with the company’s newly unveiled successor to the Wii, the Wii U, Nintendo hopes to broaden gaming’s appeal yet again — and maybe even get you to kick your iPad to the curb.
The Wii U controller, best described as a tablet with buttons, boasts two analog sticks, all the standard buttons and triggers, internal motion sensors, a microphone, speakers, a camera, and, somewhere in the middle of it all, a 6.2-inch touch screen.
With the Wii U, you’ll be able to transfer games from your TV screen to the controller, freeing up the tube and letting you take the tablet back to your bedroom for a nightcap of video chatting and browsing the Internet. The Wii U also offers a new window into a game, so to speak; holding the controller straight in front of you, you can look through the tablet’s screen at your TV to aim a baseball, or sniper rifle.
In addition to “Super Smash Bros.” and “Pikmin” installments, the Wii U will host, for starters, the open-world “Lego City Stories” and “Batman: Arkham City,” along with new installments of “Assassin’s Creed” and “Madden,” with the allure of picking football plays on your own private screen.
Great as it looks, one potential concern is that as Microsoft and Sony release their own new consoles in two or three years, Nintendo will again be left behind technologically. Also troubling is that Nintendo didn’t name a price. It’s nice that the system will be backward-compatible with Wii games and controllers, but it’s easy to imagine buying a new system and three extra tablets for your family could break the bank. We’ll find out soon enough: The Wii U releases sometime next year.
Sony’s Vita loca
Just when Nintendo thought its 3DS could run away with the hand-held market, Sony unveiled the PlayStation Vita.
The House of Walkman follows up the PlayStation Portable with a system sporting two joysticks, internal motion sensors, front and rear cameras and a 5-inch touch screen. The Vita will release this holiday season in two models: Wi-Fi-only, for $249; and, for no apparent reason, a 3G version, in partnership with AT&T, for $299.
Vita owners will be able to control an upcoming “Uncharted” game with either the touch screen or buttons; “ModNation Racers” players can use one finger to draw a racetrack; and “Little Big Planet” will also join the Vita party, with its easy game-creation tools and massive variety of user-generated content. If there’s one thing Nintendo and Apple should envy, it’s this dynamo.
To lower the price barrier to playing all the 3-D games exclusive to its PlayStation 3, Sony is shipping upcoming shooter “Resistance 3” with a 24-inch, PlayStation-branded 3-D TV and a set of glasses — all for $499. Even cooler, this may spell the end of split-screen multiplayer. If you and a buddy sit side-by-side with the glasses on, you will only see the image transmitted to your specs, so the whole screen is yours for the beholding.
Microsoft takes over your TV
Feel like talking to your Xbox 360?
Microsoft is combining its Kinect voice recognition software with its search engine Bing. So, if you were in the mood for something X-Men-related, you could say, “Xbox, Bing, X-Men,” and every X-men movie, game and animated series would pop up on your TV for you to browse and purchase.
Or you could say, “Xbox, live TV,” and flip channels, or “Xbox, YouTube,” and watch the music video for “Smooth Criminal.” The idea seems to be that your Xbox would serve as a sort of “home page” for your TV, from which you’d explore a universe of media options. It’s a cool concept, and may be a milestone as the funnel narrows toward a universal console-TV-computer-digital wallpaper setup, but it feels a little “Star Trek”-y and forced.
But Kinect owners still have reason to be excited: Microsoft is opening the Kinect game-making tools to the masses. Kinect Fun Labs, available right now for free, is sure to brim with cool designs from gamers like you, and right off the bat, there are impressive features like an avatar generator by which the add-on snaps photos of you and creates a convincing little homunculus, down to the pattern on your shirt.
On the traditional gaming front, Microsoft announced the original “Halo” is being remade as “Halo: Anniversary,” and, as expected, E3 2011 gave the world its first glimpse of “Halo 4.”
