Games Convention Update #3

Hi everyone. This is my last update from Leipzig and a more general impression of the show. Nintendo's showfloor booth was stylishly designed, featured cool shows and seemed to generate some hype for the DS. Sony's booth was much larger and featured more loungy areas, but also appeared a little empty at times because of it. At either booth, next-gen consoles played little to no role. Only trailers were shown.

Inside the Business Center, which was accessible to media, trade and industry professionals only, the Wii was the clear winner. People waited for about half an hour to play it. Among the playable titles were Battalion Wars, Wii Sports: Tennis and WarioWare. There was no Metroid Prime 3 and no third party titles. Some third party developers had Wii consoles, but there was some confusion as to whether filming was allowed.

All Wii displays featured finished hardware. At Konami's booth, I lifted a running console out of its stand and was told off by a rep immediately. It felt surprisingly light, much lighter than, say, two kilos. When I wanted to open the front flap, I was asked not to. They allowed me to open the flap housing the Gamecube controller ports, though.

Finally, the most sought after goodie of the show were the sleek Wii bags Nintendo was handing out. When they ran out of them on the third day, they put up notices to stop every other person asking.

However, even if Wii had had a less strong showing, it would have "won", if you will. The PS3 was officially not present at all. Sony offered the trade or media professionals no playable games. Some second and third parties had development kits, though (which are significantly smaller now, about the size of a very large DVD player, only almost a metre deep).

Sony proudly showed off the very first fully functional console. It remained switched off, but appeared to be the real thing, weighed 5 kilos (according to Sony reps, they wouldn't let anyone else handle it) and featured an internal power adaptor. No external brick. That may be an advantage for consumers, but also means that the consoles will have to be manufactured specfically for each country (for every type of power plug, anyway).

I spoke to quite a number of people from Sony Computer Entertainment Germany and they all seemed genuinely confident about PS3. General interest media, though, were pretty much forced to report about Wii because of the lack of PS3 consoles. I was surprised to find that even our affiliate station featured Wii (they had previously overlooked Nintendo if they ever reported about home consoles).

Lastly, I want to respond to your questions about the Nintendo event scheduled for the 14th. I have not been told about it or were alerted to any similar event to take place in Europe. It's very unlikely I will be invited to the US event. As I posted in my first update, a reliable source told me that news would come very soon, though. Rather cryptically, I was also told that especially I would find out when something is about to happen. That may have been hinting at some cooperation with a television station, perhaps similar to the Xbox360's unveiling on MTV.