Electronic Three

Well I have to say this year was much better than last year, but the world is still poorer for not having the ability to watch 26 hours of Rich Gallup. Seriously, that guy could be the host of a show about paint drying and I'd watch.

Luckily, Giant Bomb, the world's best video games website supplied the required dosage of crazy fun E3 coverage. The podcasts and videos they posted essentially made Giant Bomb a lot like being with friends at E3, which is of course The Bomb's style - we're all friends here.

Despite some attempts from IGN to steal my "Live Coverage" viewership, in the end I opted to stick with GameSpot. Eckberg, KVO, Rabara, Thorson, RyMac and soem of the others put on a pretty good show, but someone please do something about Kristin Riley. That girl is insufferable.

1Up receives a commendation for their topnotch text-based coverage. I was using their news page as essentially a wire service whilst watching the show at the 'Spot. That said, I preferred their older news frontpage, from before they used a Blog to power it. Ah well, you can't have everything.

As to the actual content...Seems like the publishers want E3 to die. The Platform holders each had some fairly interesting stuff (New Dashboard, several interesting games from SCE and Nitnendo are finally putting out a microphone), but neither they nor the third parties really showed a "wow, holy shit, that looks awesome" title. It's all singles and doubles, where are the home runs?

Highlights for me are Pure, MAG, DC Universe Online, Portal: Still Alive, Animal Crossing: City Folk (w/ Wii Speak), Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, GTA: Chinatown Wars, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead and Geometry Wars: Retro Revolved 2. There are probably others, but whatever.

Konami, what the hell? Silent Hill and Castlevania? Singles and doubles, kids. Where's the home runs? For you, home run means: Metal GEAR!!!

So anyway, this looks like the last E3. All signs point to an untimely demise. For one thing, the banner saying "See you next year"? Missing. For another, I've already pointed out a lack of tentpole announcements. E3 as it stands is unimportant, small and is less and less unique all the time.

I for one loved the good old days of too little sleep, people runnign around a massive and spectacular show floor shwoing off awesome games. Yeah, maybe it was a bit hectic and hard to cover, but it's only for three days kids, you can do it.

You could also restore E3 to its former glory and still make it easier to cover, lemme tell you how:

Keep it invite-only, but make it big again. You could allow some more elaborate displays, make it more engaging, but still restrict attendees - you wouldn't need to limit them as much though. You could get senior retail people back for example, a sector conspicuous by absence this year.

Here's hoping that E3 does stay, even if it is a shadow of its former glory.

Jens Out

Pinging you

Hey guys, sorry I missed the blogging my impressions of the conferences. I was going to move it all to Tuesday, but I had to wait to watch the Sony and Nintendo ones and I didn't get to do so until I got up earlier.

I'll be posting instead about my impressions of all E3 on Friday. I'll get to it either between the two F1 Practice Sessions or after the second one. As a tiny preview: there's nothing I'm absolutely pumped to hell for...Like, at all. Certainly nothing new. Not that there's nothing new I want, just nothing has me as excited as some of last year's stuff.

My MobileMe code came and I'm now a full subscriber, so that's pretty cool. It's a nice service, I like being able to get at my stuff on my Mac, in a browser or on my iPod. Speaking of my Mac, I had a few software problems, but I managed to fix them just by trashing some files. Very happy, in Windows I'd probably have had to reinstall the OS.

Speaking of Windows, the box is gone. My only computer is the Mac mini, my favourite of all the computers I've owned, followed closely by the Eee of course. With it's 750GB external Hard Drive, iTunes and EyeTV (Which is fantastic by the way) it's also a fantastic Media Centre, an entertainment powerhouse.

But without my PC, my consoles are gonna be my focus in terms of gaming. Yes folks, that's right, another player has abandoned the PC Platform. And I'll tell you why: it doesn't work. Games are increasingly supposed to be a pervasive expereince, PC just fails to deliver that.

So, to ensue I have access to games not available on the Wii, I'm getting a 360, as you know. Torturously, I'm relatively certain I have to wait until I get my GCSE results and to make that worse...I got given a copy of Unreal Tournament 3. Which I really want to play.

It's agonising, seriously.

I saw Hancock the other day, and as I expected, that film kicked ass. I loved it, Hancock is officially my second favourite super hero behind Spider-Man now, it's that good. Only thing is, it's crying out for a game.

Someone needs to get on that.

Jens Out

Happy Days People

That Prom? Kicked ass. But then, if you follow me on Twitter or MySpace, then you probably knew I thought that. It's re-energised me in the best way. Between the best night of my life and the love of my life, I'm happier than I've ever been. And I've changed a bit, for the better.

Mainly, I'm much more a social animal now. Which means my already growing preoccupation with social media has ballooned. I'm going to start blogging and Tweeting about life in general a bit more, but don't worry, I'm still a geek so technology won't be disappearing from the Blog.

On that note, I have updated my iPod touch to 2.0 and put a load of Apps on it. I'm bowled over, it's absolutely fantastic. I can't recommend Twittelator enough by the way, excellent mobile Twitter client - and on iPhone it saves you the cost of a text. Can't be bad, eh?

That I suppose is another example of the social media thing. I also happen to have MySpace Mobile and iFob on there. Of course you know what MySpace is. iFob is a vaguely similar location-based social network allowing peple to interact because they're near. This includes messaging and photo-viewing and shizz.

All very neat. I'm also quite fond of Apple's "Remote" which allows me to control iTunes (Or an Apple TV) from he iPod touch from anywhere in the house using the iPod touch iPod App style. This App is also able to switch between different iTunes copies, so with it you can live the total home thatre control dream today.

I ordered my copy of MobileMe...Well, my activation key I mean. Speaking of which, I've already started to use the Me.com web apps and they're excellent. Very pretty, very high-quality. You cna now hit me up at jensonb (at) mac (dot) com or jensonb (at) me (dot) com.

I also have it set up on my iPod and I must say it was a wonderfully simple process.

E3 is this coming week, I'll be blogging my impressions of the major press briefings (Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony) so look for that Monday and Tuesday.

I think that's all for now. If I think of anything else, I'll post again

Jens Out

Talking Smack

Hey Sony, looks like we're gonna get another preview of PlayStation Home at E3. I eman, I don't care, do whatever you want, it's of little interest to me, but aren't you even slightly embarassed that you annonced this thing in early '07 for an October that year release and this is it's second E3, 2008 and current info suggests that you'll only get the Beta out this year, maybe?

Dude, whatever.

And how about you Microsoft? Doesn't it make you feel a little embarrassed that your console ships without Wi-Fi? Toasters have Wi-Fi these days. In order to get the 360 to have Wi-Fi, you want me to spend £55 on a dongle. These things cost like £20 for PCs. Are you freaking kidding me? There's a way to get my Mac to share its internet connection with the 360. It's convuluted, but you bet your ass I'm trying that before buying your POS peripheral for £55 - apparently it's not even a very good dongle.

This is especially weak because your USP is Xbox LIVE, industry standard online gaming service.

And Nintendo...For God's sake...Make your online system fun. All we want is oemthing akin to Xbox LIVE. Doesn't need to be as feature-rich. Just give us account names, not numbers. Let me accept adds, rather than adding back. Give us voice chat and make Animal Crossing an MMO.

You could add all this in a Wii Channel. Call it the Nintendo Player Connect Channel, something, anything. Just fix the gaming side of the Wii internet.

Talking smack is therapeutic.

Jens Out

Plans

Okay, so O2 have totally effed me over here. But, I still want the iPhone and I still intend to go with Pay/Go. For that reason, I will buy one this winter by saving up for a couple of months (All it will take, my monthly income will be increasing to start at £275 come Autumn).

In the meantime, I'm going to have my parents buy me a cheaper new phone on the Tesco Mobile network. Probably the cheaper Sony Ericsson slider in white. Additionally, I'll have them buy the hard drive I have my eye on, the 750GB one. Anything left over I'll spend on a game or something, perhaps making use of my GameStation Gift Voucher (I'm praying for Twin Snakes).

That leaves me to buy my new TV Tuner and MobileMe. All told, that still leaves me with £95 after I take into account LOVEFiLM. If I don't end up with Twin Snakes, I might use some fo that for that, otherwise there's some miscellaneous stuff I've yet to buy like iWork and iTunes films.

Next month is probably my Xbox 360 in that scenario. It's gonna take over the PC's place in the VGA Switcher. But its physical location? I have no idea.

There's a chance I'll buy a DS Lite with that £95. I'm not sure, I'm just thinking about it. In that case, the 360 will be a month later and next month will be iWork and stuff.

Jens Out

Housecleaning

Switched to a new design you may have noticed, it reflects the gradual change in tone up in here. I'm also currently in the process of tagging all the posts in the archive, and since I don't have any exams until June 3rd now, I should be getting that done in the next week or so.

I'm now on Twitter, dunno what I'm going to do with it, but I imagine I'll find some use for micro-blogging in the future. Follow me if you use it, but right now it's probably not worth joining just to follow me.

I'm hoping to get around to those exam reviews next week, I have some issues with all three I've done so far so stay tuned for that.

I finally enabled Advanced Desktop (Vanilla Xandros) on my Eee the other day, so I've been kind of geeking out. That's how I roll, yo.

Nintendo are bringing a turquoise DS Lite out. Hot damn. That might be the thing that makes me upgrade. That thing is lush.

Rumours abound Apple will unveil a 3G iPhone soon (Like, within 3 weeks) which will go on sale shortly thereafter worldwide. The most exciting rumour is that it may be sold contract-free at the fll price, with carriers offering rebates (Similar to the one offered by Carphone Warehouse and O2 recently) to drive contract sales. Well if I can get a 3G 16GB iPhone for £269, contract-free, then I might just have to go for that instead of the Sony.

I'd be more aprehensive about an 8GB, it wouldn't be a big enough upgrade on the touch.

Right, I'm off to spec up a computer to drool over at VooDooPC's website. I'll finish the upgrades to the blog soon.

Goodbye my Coney Island baby
Jens

Moore departs, analysts predict Black Hole to form as a result

Microsoft have lost their second gaming bigwig in as many consoles as Peter Moore departs to helm EA Sports, a role which will take him cross platform and have him lead the fight against "upstart" 2KGames.

Microsoft have tapped someone uninteresting to replace him, but this all begs the question: When are they going to swallow their pride, pull J Allard out of the zune and get him back fronting the games division? I'm sure Mattrick is good, but the company needs consistency again. Mattrick leads, J talks? It could work.

In other news, Nintendo look set to be named Best in Show at E3, largely by default. The title would have gone to Sony, but for their PR woes over this PS3 fire sale...Er..."Price Cut".

Microsoft meanwhile had a good show, but not a spectacular one. Good enough, but it could only have one with the expected price cut. Likelihood is, they want to distance the price cut from their recent warranty fiasco. Speaking of, wonder if that has anything to do with Moore's departure..?

And lastamly, a bootnote for my ongoing coverage.

iPhone Europe: T-Mobile all but confirmed for Germany, O2 again linked to UK deal

T-Mobile slipped up and posted info about the - well, the word - iPhone on their German website, making the deal all but certain.

Meanwhile, more sources close to the deal have said O2 have won the UK contract, which has fueled speculation that iPhone Europe must be 3G. O2 aint got no 2.5G son.