Contrasting two press conferences.

The point of an E3 press conference is to generate excitement for the upcoming year, and today I got to experience two of them. While I’ll admit I only saw Microsoft’s online while being able to see Electronic Arts’s in person, the quality difference between both the presentation and information was night-and-day. While Microsoft wanted little more than to grab Nintendo’s casual gaming market while furthering the Xbox 360 as a multimedia device, EA wanted to produce killer video games.

It’s not that there wasn’t good info in the Microsoft press conference, it’s just that it was presented in such a way as to completely minimize its impact. Fable II should be an excellent action RPG, but they showed a lengthy full-motion video followed by actual gameplay of walking around talking to NPCs. Yay? Being able to call in friends for multiplayer co-op with almost no fuss at all is going to lead to some amazing kick-ass moments, and none of those moments involves chatting with fake polygon people.

Compare this to EA’s live gameplay demo of Mirror’s Edge, which was a complete run-through of the first level. All I wanted after seeing it played was to run out and buy the game immediately. I want to jump around in an urban playground, taking out cops and not being required to fire a single bullet in the whole game if I didn’t want to. EA’s presentation highlighted the parts of the game that look fun and amazing, creating (at least in me) a desire to get out there and play!

Microsoft wasn’t all bad, though. Both Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 and Galaga Legions looked like a blast, and the track lineup for Rock Band 2 looks incredible. But Lips is another Karaoke Revolution clone, the new dashboard is an iTunes clone, and don’t even get me started on the Avatars. The few minutes of awesome couldn’t even begin to balance the snoozefest of online game shows, or the deep hurting of You’re In the Movies. Hell, the biggest announcement was a partnership with Netflix, and while that’s all very cool and an excellent bonus feature, it’s got nothing to do with gaming.

It’s not like EA didn’t have their duds as well. SimAnimals was so info-lite that I’ve no idea if it’s better than its mediocre video. Gabe Newell’s PowerPoint presentation of Left 4 Dead tried its level best to make a game about co-op zombie killing with adaptive scenarios generated on the fly based on player performance sound boring. There was even a presentation on Nucleus, and online reputation tracker that will also help with microtransactions. But for every person who tried to kill the excitement stone-dead there were three who filled the stage with their presence. I don’t care about basketball in the slightest but Bill Walton was so much fun to watch as he upstaged Peter Moore that it hardly mattered. Even better than that was Will Wright, sounding almost completely unscripted and 100% fascinating. You can’t go wrong with someone who comes up with the unit of measure of 1 God to describe the time it takes to create all of Earth’s unique species. EA has been trying to shed its “Evil Empire” reputation for the last several years, and putting the focus on new and creative games presented by the enthusiastic people behind them is a great way to do it.

Press conferences are tricky things. It’s easy to end up sending the wrong message, no matter how on-target it must have sounded during the planning stages. What I got from both Microsoft and EA was a desire to change into something different, but only in EA’s case was that a good thing. I’m pretty sure Microsoft is going to have some great stuff coming up amidst the irrelevant shelf-filler, but I’m absolutely certain that EA is going to have a very interesting year.

This blog article should be recognized as the sole opinion of the editor and does not necessarily reflect TNL’s official position on the subject.