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The hardware of the 3DS, to me, is pretty much the only thing that makes Nintendo win E3. The hardware is just drool-inducing.

Games-wise, however, I can't say I'm impressed. Yes, there's tons of games, but they're relying far too much on really old franchises. Donkey Kong, Kirby, Zelda, etc., are all nice, but they're not mind blowing. At least they didn't look that way to me. Far too much reliance on nostalgia for my tastes, and aside from Kid Icarus (which I frankly saw coming from a mile away), none of their showings seemed "fresh" to me. Nostalgia doesn't work on me. Not for new games, at least.

Sony's conference was sort of a hit-and-miss. Aside from your typical Hi-I'm-Mr-Stuck-Up-My-Ass whiner, the general consensus was that the Kevin Butler appearance was pretty win. The Move, to me, looked competent enough to keep my attention, and the surprise stuff like Twisted Metal, Portal 2/Steam on the PS3, etc. were pretty good, but the pacing of the conference itself was a bit too erratic, and they COMPLETELY fucking neglected to even mention The Last Guardian, which is a big failure in my book. The awesome HD Sly Cooper announcement only partially makes up for it.

Microsoft, though, was a BIG embarrassment to the gaming community. The only thing the presser did was show everyone that their marketing folk are still stuck in 2006 wishing they could be the company that captured the casual market, like a 36-year-old unemployed man wishing he could still re-live his glorious high school football days. Their presser was, aside from being a BLATANT and shameless ripoff of Nintendo's marketing campaign, showed an incredible lack of focus and simply just lacked inspiration. The fact that they dragged Rare into making a generic Wii Sports ripoff is just flat out sad, and the fact that Microsoft CHOSE to copy Nintendo's '08 E3 presser (arguably the worst presser they've had in recent memory) just makes them seem completely out of touch with reality. It's like they were off in their own make-believe world where they were the first to capture the casual market by storm and that everyone gave a shit as to what they were doing. In reality, though, they wasted perfectly good tech with horrid mini-game compilations following a 4-year-old marketing campaign with no real plan for long-term use, embarrassing themselves in front of the gaming audience. Microsoft, you really jumped the shark this time.

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Originally posted by Aerakin

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...Might wanna add that hardware also doesn't make the console (or so I heard, remember the whole DS vs. PSP thing back in the day?)

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