The Legend of Zelda.  Donkey Kong Country.  Kirby.  Mario Sports.  Nintendogs.  Even Kid Icarus and GoldenEye – no doubt about it, no matter the angle or the context, Nintendo had games, games, games at last month’s E3.  And that’s only on the stage floor; once the press conference’s lights had gone down and the crowds had dispersed, there was a second, even more potent tsunami of offerings in video and demo form:  Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, Star Fox, Pilotwings, Paper Mario, Professor Layton, Resident Evil, Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear Solid.  It’s almost literally a never-ending parade of videogame goodness, comprised of some of the biggest and best in the industry.

Sony, on the other end of the spectrum, had a plethora of PlayStation-branded initiatives.  3D gaming, motion gaming, portable gaming, premium online gaming – although some rather large and robust titles were on hand at the presser, ranging from Sorcery to The Sly Collection to, most notably, Twisted Metal, they functioned, at least in the context of the media briefing, more as living proof and demonstrations of the company’s expanded portfolio of services rather than real destinations, in and of themselves, for wayward gamers this holiday season.

The irony could not be more palpable.  For years now, Nintendo has unleashed its software library to not only prove the viability of the Wii’s motion controls, but to also expound upon them at every turn:  Link’s Crossbow Training introduced the Zapper (or is that the other way around?); Mario Kart Wii, a steering wheel peripheral; Wii Fit, the balance board; Wii Sports Resort, Wii Motion Plus.  (On tap next is the still-mysterious [and inexplicable] Vitality Sensor.)  For Nintendo to abruptly transition from this cavalcade of casual-friendly plastic add-ons to a roster of hardcore-leaning, remarkably motion-less games is stunning, to say the least.

Sony, of course and obviously, has pushed the opposite tack since its very first steps into the videogame industry.  Titles like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy VII, and Gran Turismo, among many, many others, established the PlayStation brand, while Onimusha, Grand Theft Auto III, and Ico (again, among several others) almost immediately cemented the PS2’s status as worthy successor and, indeed, expansive expander; even the PS3 was launched with a stable of high-profile, surprisingly original (if not always critically regarded) software, ranging from Resistance to Heavenly Sword to Uncharted.  To arrive at a show where peripherals, whether they be 3D glasses or the Move and its family of motion-sensing cousins, constitute the bulk and brunt of Sony’s efforts is extremely interesting, if not outright historic.

(More interesting still is Microsoft’s dramatic submission to the sway of the casual court.  With half of its conference devoted to previously-unveiled games, little in the way of new or major announcements, and an overwhelming focus on Kinect and its ability to either engage players in Wii shovelware or users with voice-accentuated movie playback, MS unceremoniously took Nintendo’s former position of sacrificing hardcore zeal for mainstream attention.  Its briefing was, in many ways, a nadir for the company, in terms of both the Xbox as well as the 360 eras – although there is little doubt that Halo: Reach, Fable III, and Gears of War 3 will dominate, both commercially and critically, at the end of this year and the beginning of the next.)

In many ways, the market is right back to where it was 15 long years ago:  Nintendo, with the upper hand, versus Sony, with a lot to prove, locked in a hotly contested and easily decidable conflict.

It’s just that now the battle lines are more amorphous and the centers of power, reversible.

Something’s a-brewing at E3.

This would normally be nothing either new or unique, given the expo’s status as ground zero of the gaming world, but, in this particular case, it represents a long-gestating trend that promises to change the industry of our cherished pastime just as much, if not more, than Sony’s multimedia cavalcade and Nintendo’s motion-control revolution:  diversification, which is a polite way of saying a fracturing focus and splintering product line.

This year’s Microsoft presser was split neatly down the middle between the Xbox 360 and Kinect, the motion-sensing camera formerly known as Project Natal – a first for the company, despite the former and sporadic (not to mention typically lackluster) presence of Games for Windows content in shows past.  Nintendo likewise divvied up its presentation between its Wii and newly-announced 3DS systems, though this is hardly new in the big N’s case; it’s been segmenting its conferences since the first expo, 15 long years ago.

But Sony takes the cake (no pun intended, dear Gabe Newell).  Perhaps reflecting its diverse product line as an electronics manufacturer, SCEA had to contend with the PS3, PSP, and PSN even before the new additions of the PS Move, PS Plus, and PS3D (not an official appellation, but Sony may yet reconsider this excellent chance at [further] branding) were added to the E3 mix.  The console market has literally never seen the likes of this before, even with the endless iterations of both the 360 and the PS3 taken into account.  The question now facing both Sony and the industry is:  will gamers across the country – and, indeed, around the world – embrace this PlayStation saturation, or will they shrug indifferently as they cast their controllers, both traditional and motion, aside, just as they did to the Atari-led gaming blitzkrieg of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s?

The answer resides in yet another answer to yet another query.  Such a full roster – so full, in fact, that the PSP only showed up for some five minutes at the two-hour-long press briefing – is indicative of just one of two possibilities:  confidence or fear.  Either Sony is so thoroughly convinced of the ten-year lifespan of its mighty console that it is eager to keep piling reason upon reason to keep the PS3 front and center of the living room, or it is so fearful of either a weak economy or stronger-then-expected competition from its two eternal rivals that it feels the incessant, almost compulsive need to keep tweaking and fiddling.  For, make no mistake, this is a situation that can easily go either way; videogame history is paved – well, all right, occasionally paved – with examples of companies engaging in interactive excess, such as Sega’s barrage of the Sega CD, the 32X, redesigns of the Genesis and Sega CD and 32X, and the Saturn within a two-and-a-half year period.

Ultimately, however, it seems that Sony just may well end up rewriting history, and doing so successfully, yet again.  Not only do the manufacturer’s recent initiatives provide real and substantial additions to the gameplaying experience – there is a far cry from playing Killzone 3 in 3D or Socom 4 with the Move than, say, playing the DSi XL over the original DSi – but it is extremely unlikely that all consumers will feel the need to purchase all of the expanded capabilities, just as, indeed, a third-party developer will not feel compelled to release a brand-new title with 3D and Move functionality along with PS Plus-exclusive DLC.  Rather than relying upon the standard console tradition of everyone-does-everything-identically content, Sony may be trailblazing a new, expanded (forgive me for using the dreaded buzzword) structure of allowing different types of users to freely engage in different types of uses.

If this is truly the case, then be fully prepared to see the Wii Too and the Xbox 720 – not to mention, of course, the PlayStation 4 – utilizing the exact same set-up.

There is a running contest being waged amongst the console manufacturers and evaluated solely in my mind.  I call it the Ingenuity Award, and it is bestowed on the company that most shakes things up, that most pushes the console envelope, that most advances the medium of videogames.  In the 32-/64-bit generation (1995-1999), the recipient was easily Sony.

It was under Sony’s watch that cartridges were phased out, systems (slowly) became multimedia beasts, and marketing campaigns switched from the prepubescent demographic to that of the twenty-somethings; it was on the PlayStation that such endearing and enduring gameplay experiences as Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Metal Gear Solid were collected.   Despite the Nintendo 64 offering some compelling titles of its own – many of which are still considered to be the best games ever crafted in the history of the medium – there was simply no contest between the mostly regressive and reactionary Nintendo and the progressive and trailblazing Sony.

The 128-bit generation (1999-2005) saw a substantial-but-not-irrevocable slide, with Microsoft, the new newcomer, grabbing the award – there was no way Sony (or Nintendo) could compete against the onslaught of a perfectly streamlined console experience that produced Halo and resulted in Xbox Live – but it was a backtracking that carried with it a formidable dose of forewarning:  if the giant international corporation were not careful, it could and would replace Nintendo as the remote island of gameplay experiences, an oasis of Gran Turismo and Ico surrounded by miles and miles of cultural irrelevance.

It was, alas, a warning the company was too arrogant to take notice of.  The 256-bit Sony is a fumbling, Vaudevillian mess, the Jar Jar Binks of Microsoft and a resurgent Nintendo’s Rebel Alliance – one produces X-wings and Admiral Ackbars; the other, in a vain attempt to mimic his more sophisticated brethren, fabricates fart jokes in between Jerry Lewis pratfalls.   What a difference eleven years makes.

Just what happened?  There have been many mistakes, ranging from outrageous price tags to the seemingly never-ending parade of dropped features (dual HDTV outputs, USB/memory card slots, backwards compatibility, Linux support), but there is one fundamental element that lurks behind every misstep and manifests itself in every miscalculation:  passiveness.  Instead of being boldly progressive, Sony is now blindly reactionary, lurching desperately from one concept to the other in the desperate hope that something, anything will work to keep the evil bogeymen of Microsoft and Nintendo at bay.  The one thing that each of these concepts has in common?  They’re all someone else’s idea.

Sony had been in the console manufacturing business for exactly one decade when Microsoft kicked off the current generation with one of the most mystifyingly moronic decisions in all of videogame history – releasing multiple configurations of one system.  Instead of rebuking the development by summarily ignoring it, as did Nintendo (to much success), Sony instead adopted it as its own, even taking it to an extreme that can only be described as silly.  Three-and-a-half years and six iterations later, there are now more PS3 variations on the market than the number of Nintendo consoles made within the past 25 years.

But it is in Nintendo’s newfound Mecca of motion controls that Sony has most shamelessly shoplifted.   After an initial, bungled effort to incorporate motion sensitivity into its original, quasi-DualShock controller – blatantly lifted from the Wii’s press conference announcement and rushed to market before Nintendo’s system could arrive – the company has ended where it began, making much fanfare and flourish over the PlayStation Move, a Wiimote controller that makes use of a Nunchuk-esque “sub controller” and a video camera (which is itself a holdover from the PS2 days).  Sony even kicked off its marketing campaign for the device at this year’s Game Developers’ Conference by essentially brandishing the peripheral(s) as a “Wii for the HD” crowd.  One cannot get more reactionary than this.

A comparison can be made between the console manufacturers and television networks – when one is on the outs, it turns to cutting-edge material (or, simply, material that cuts edges off of production costs), making it fresh and new and rocketing it to the top of the Neilson hill.  Once it becomes dominant yet again, it becomes complacent and, thus, grows stale and conservative, plunging down the ratings ladder and starting the process all over again.  There is little doubt that Sony will manage, at some point down the road, to reinvent itself and, along the way, the rest of the industry, as well – but there is still the small, gnawing possibility that it will pull a Sega instead of a Nintendo, becoming an evolutionary dead-end instead of evolving to serve other ends.

Indeed, at the rate Sony’s going, I just might have to add another category to my mental competition:  Most Wayward Spirit (original recipient:  Sega).

Oh, what a fitting title. After a particularly… interesting bender about a week ago, I decided it might be a good idea to swear off the hooch for a while, and it’s actually done wonders for productivity (I mean, have you seen TPS lately? We’re actually updating again!). Without my normal haze to cloud the daily routine of playing through all manner of crap games, though, it’s been something of a quest to actually keep my brain active. I’ve become a complete Jeopardy! junkie again (though not the PS3 game — we actually shelled out $15 here at the office and were so horribly disappointed that we wished there was a way to get PSN refunds; how can you have multiple-choice Jeopardy!? And without Trebek? Naaaah, bad mojo, that one), but then I’ve always been something of a game show die-hard to begin with.

Maybe that’s why I took so quickly to the Buzz! series in the first place. The PS2 games had just the right blend of smarmy host quips (it’s always important when the contestants get berated a little by a high-and-mighty emcee, after all) and great questions, plus a ton of different categories that usually ended up leveling the playing field a few times to keep those that would try to pull ahead by answering every question like their life depended on it (it’s called “The Sam Technique” around here for a reason, I suppose). Even when getting pies to the face constantly, though, the game was a blast, and we’d even turned it into a drinking game well before the PS3 version came out.

When it did, Sony was actually cool enough to send over beer and pizza (a seriously welcome gesture, as it was Round Table, and it literally disappeared from its little cardboard cage in about five minutes. Yes, we’re an office of Round Table lovers. The Heineken Light? I think there’s still three or four o’ those in the fridge, and we keep trying to pawn ‘em off on PR folks that stop by to no avail (what, no drinking at 11AM? Surely you jest!). In any event, Buzz! Quiz TV — that’s the PS3 one, mind you. Was a big hit here too, though that’s hardly surprising.

What did surprise, us, though, was how comparatively trimmed-down the whole experience was when it moved to the PS3. Yes, the graphics were quite nice and the game itself was classic Buzz!, but there were fewer modes and, it seemed, a few more repeats in the supplied questions, which had shrunk by a couple thousand. Granted, there was now the ability to create your own quizzes (some of which were pretty awesome, actually) and share them online, but clearly there was something else planned.

Turns out (surprise, surprise) that Sony had planned to release multiple themed question packs (about 500 Qs apiece), and have since rolled out Comedy, National Geographic: Safari, National Geographic: Undersea, Sci-Fi, Videogames and Horror Quiz Packs since the game hit back in September, which isn’t a bad run. For whatever reason (likely because we’ve all been insanely busy over the Holidays), I never really had the itch to jump in, but when Sony kicked over a code for things, I really couldn’t resist anymore.

The American Culture Quiz Pack is, surprisingly, pretty awesome. Any downloaded Quiz Packs just become an extra category, but they won’t always crop up, meaning you won’t burn through the 500 questions in week or something. American Culture pretty much covers the gamut of US geography, music technology, history, politics, people, places and so on, so there’s plenty of variety. I am starting to get a little burned out on how easy a lot of these questions are (and yeah, I understand, they have to make it accessible for anyone who drops coin for ‘em, but still). I also didn’t pick up on a whole lot of (if any; it’s been a while) new comments from Buzz himself, which the PS3 version desperately needs (especially if you’re playing solo, as it’s literally the same lines over and over and over and over…), but content-wise, things are exacty as billed.

Despite any little gripes I might have about things, running through the questions here both by myself and with some of the other staffers has definitely rekindled my interest in picking Buzz! up again, and we’ve already decided that we’d be stupid not to have some kind of contest (sadly, no drinking for me) with the Videogame Pack, so I’ll probably be grabbing that this week. If we make something fancy of it, I’ll be sure to update you guys with pics of the debauchery. Something tells me it’s going to end with Sunny making me shave my head or something. On second thought, maybe pics are a bad idea.

You may have seen our story recently on the recent firmware 2.40 update and all the (potential) deliciousness it brings. We actually shied away from going all-out on pimping it because we were told from multiple dev sources that it was very much a foundation for stuff going forward. I even personally tried to tell forumgoers elsewhere that it was something that was going to take time to really gain traction.

The reality of what 2.40 adds to the PlayStation 3 experience is something that isn’t exactly tangible from the get-go. Yes, you have custom soundracks. Yes, you have Trophies, which to me is huge because rather than an arbitrary number, you now have that and an RPG-style level. Why the hell this is more engrossing to me than GamerPoints has actually caused me a bit of concern. There is quite literally zero difference between the two in the grand scheme of things; it’s still just a number, but something about the idea of “leveling up” based on grabbing Bronze, Silver and Gold trophies is, admittedly, intoxicating.

We don’t even have a full-fledged game yet patched (at least at the time of this blog) that supports the idea of the “Platinum Trophy” (you get it for earning all the Bronze/Silver/Gold Trophies, and it gives you, in effect, an “experience boost” for nailing ‘em all). But I want it. I don’t even know why I want it, but I do. It’s the RPG nut in me, and duplicative though it may be toward Microsoft’s Achievements, something about it being not another number yet, yes, still another number amazes me.

But 2.40 isn’t perfect. It went well for most of our systems, but Warren’s machine has bucked and decided to restart at random times. Still other tales persist on forums across these here tubes that tell a far more frightening tale: PS3s are getting bricked. We’ve contacted Sony, but not after all this rabble has eased a little, to hopefully get an official comment on things (we’ll let you know when we know).

It does seem that this is an issue commonly tied to people that opted to go the very route that Sony had allowed and upgraded their hard drives. In many cases, this includes the 40GB folks, which, aside from the Metal Gear Solid bundle, have already had to suffer no PlayStation 2 backwards compatibility if they wanted to play someting other then PS3 and PS one games. The (relatively) meager storage space was also a reason to throw another hard drive in there.

It does seem the solution so far is to just insert the normal system-ready hard drive back into the PS3. Things update (begrudgingly, if my 30 minutes of literally constant rebooting and searching for an update to Super Stardust HD are any indictation), but we’ll get an official word from Sony here soon… I hope.