By Banshee on 6/1/01

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The Keynote

As stated in our news blurb, we hit the ground running on the first day of E3, but we'll recap the keynote for those who missed it.

Doug Lowenstein	Robert J. Bach	Kazuo Hirai	Peter T. Main

Douglas Lowenstein, president of the Interactive Digital Software Association, kicked off the show with bright predictions for the future of gaming. According to the data presented, 119 million people will be playing games by the year 2005.

The keynote panel set the tone for the next three days: console, console, console. Participants included three major players in the console market, and each articulated the differences between their company's personalities and strategies and those of their rivals.

Peter T. Main, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America, made it clear that content is "the first, second, and third priority" for Nintendo. He also mentioned the glut of titles currently on the market: ". . . we don't need 25 of everything," he stated, indicating that Nintendo is interested in "helping developers do fewer games better."

In sharp contrast to Main's understated tone, the president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment was almost arrogantly aggressive. There were murmurs in the audience as Kazuo Hirai issued this challenge with a smirk and a shrug: "We're looking to see who's going to be number two . . . actually, we're really looking to see who's going to be number three." He issued other barbs as well, but neither Bach nor Main rose to Hirai's bait.

Robert J. Bach was casual and bluntly honest: "We'll spend the money we need to get into the marketplace." The senior VP of Microsoft's games division seemed well aware that the Xbox was the new kid on the console block that has yet to prove itself against the competition.

Despite Sony's current market dominance, Main seemed the clear winner of the keynote panel. His comments were frequently met with applause from the audience and he seemed relaxed and polished, as well he might with over fourteen years of Nintendo experience. Indeed, his success in the panel discussion may have been an auspicious sign for Nintendo's showing at E3. The buzz I heard about the Gamecube was almost universally positive. Doug Lowenstein told us that three-fifths of all consoles are in living rooms, and with an announced price of $199 ($100 less than the PS2 and Xbox), Nintendo's Gamecube could be coming to a living room near you.

The Sights and The Sounds

The show floors opened at 10 am, and I headed straight for Kentia Hall. Kentia is one of the smaller halls at E3, and I decided to make it the focus of my first day at the Los Angeles Convention Center so I could ease my way into the rhythm of E3 before tackling South Hall and West Hall.

Some of my peers sardonically refer to Kentia as a "reject hall." I beg to differ. There are some interesting gems to be found here, and unlike the larger areas you can often actually hear the product demonstration. Many of the smaller international companies make their showing here; if one stands between booths, it's possible to hear a confluence of native argots tumbling together, making Kentia Hall an inadvertent bastion of multiculturalism.

Jim Henson Interactive

I'd allocated a bit of time to just walk the corridors before my first appointment, and it was here that I stumbled across an interesting item that had nothing (directly) to do with a game, or so I thought at the time. My first discovery proved to be one of the more fascinating bits of hardware I saw at E3: Jim Henson Interactive has come up with a new kind of puppetry rig called the Henson Digital Performance Studio, or HDPS. This may not seem particularly newsworthy in and of itself considering that the Henson name is almost synonymous with puppetry, however, this weird, hands-on gizmo acts as an input device that links the puppeteer to a computer and allows direct manipulation of an on-screen character. The first generation of the HDPS actually debuted in 1999, but the current version is a significant advance. All of its effects are surprisingly realistic. I watched Farscape's Xan loll a pink tongue at onlookers and roll her eyes around in real time as if trying to take in all the sights of E3 at once.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Final Cut

On the way to my first appointment, I stopped by Arxel Tribe's booth. Those of you who are fans of adventure titles will recognize the French developer of Ring, Faust (distributed as Seven Games of the Soul in the US), Pompeii, and The Legend of the Prophet and the Assassin. I got a peek at the forthcoming Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Final Cut, due this fall. The player will guide private eye and psychic Joseph Shamley through the investigation of the disappearance of an entire movie crew. Clips from some of Alfred Hitchcock's most famous films are interspersed throughout the game; I saw the famous shower scene from Psycho in the demo. However, it's not just the movie snippets that provide The Final Cut's suspenseful atmosphere: the in-game art, backgrounds, and camera views all show a deliberate and conscious attempt by the designers to achieve the look and feel of a classic Hitchcock thriller. If you are a fan of Hitchcock or a fan of Arxel Tribe's previous work, you're likely to enjoy this homage to the Master of Suspense.

Next: The Hitchhiker's Guide and Intergalactic Bounty Hunter