By Peter Caranicas Mar 9, 2007, 3:51 GMT
Gamers' hearts, minds and wallets... REUTERS/Eric Miller
Many of the 12,500-plus enthusiastic gamers attending the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco listened raptly to successive keynote addresses – one on Wednesday, the other on Thursday – by executives of two of the three video game giants, Sony and Nintendo.
First up was Phil Harrison, President, Worldwide Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment. He unveiled “Home,” an online user community for PS3 players that allows them to create their own avatar, with custom facial features and clothing, as well as the virtual world he or she lives in. Think video games meet MySpace.
In this fantasy environment, downloadable free from the Playstation Store, players will create their own “apartments,” play movies (well, movie trailers at first) for their invited “friends,” and show off the trophies they’ve gotten for their gaming prowess. Many of the building blocks they use to create their spaces are free, but some are “premium” items, presumably to the benefit of Sony’s bottom line.
Sony also unveiled a new PS3 game, LittleBigPlanet, developed by Media Molecule, creator of Ragdoll Kung-Fu. The physics-and-natural-materials-based game drew gasps and applause from the assembled crowd, which was transfixed by its whimsical nature, the way its adorable characters interact with their surroundings, and its ability to encourage collaboration and sharing among multiple players. Trial versions will start this fall and a full version will follow in early 2008.
The next day’s keynote belonged to Shigeru Miyamoto, Senior Managing Director and General Manager of Nintendo’s Entertainment Analysis and Development Division – dubbed “the Spielberg of video games” by Time magazine, and a hero to a generation of mostly males who grew up playing the popular Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda games.
Miyamoto didn’t unveil any mind-blowing new games, but focused on the creative vision that has driven his and Nintendo’s success over the years, leading up to the introduction late last year of the “revolutionary” Wii platform. Nintendo thrives in a culture of challenge and risk, he said, but “none of our risks has ever rivaled the risk we took in designing Wii.”
Everyone at Nintendo was nervous about how Wii, a system based on players’ natural motion rather than button pushing, would be accepted by a world entrenched in traditional ways. Those fears dissipated at last spring’s E3 show when “long lines and happy faces” materialized at Nintendo’s booth.
The third video-game giant – Microsoft, developer of the Xbox 360 platform – was missing in action at the Game Developers Conference. Was the colossus of Seattle sleeping? That’s hardly likely. It was probably just waiting in the wings, hatching up its next move in the video games industry’s perpetual game of leapfrog.
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