Did you attend Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles? What struck your eye as noteworthy in light of today's coin-op amusement industry?
Newsweek's review of the show's buzz product was, "Nintendo's Wii: a hit for both kids and Grandma. Xbox 360: perfect for the dorm room. PS3: for movie lovers with a trust fund." Is this a realistic evaluation? How does affordable, family-focused fun register on the radar?
A discussion on E3 began in a former post, with an attendee commenting the show "was interesting in that there was little media focus or attention on the violent home titles. There was more interest on new hardware (Sony's Playstation 3 and Nintendo's Wii) as well as mobile phone software. It was also nice to see coin-op equipment on the floor, but why were they pieces not available to us operators yet (Time Crisis 4 and DDR Supernova)?"
7 comments:
It was a blast, though one has to ask why can E3 get Virtua Fighter 5 and Guitar Freaks 5 on their booth but ASI can't?
Sega has a real problem now, from our sources they had tens of visitors on their booth asking when they will bring VF5 over to US arcades - now try and explain there was no interest!!
Just a thought could we mix ASI with E3?
This was the first year in the last 5 that I did not go to E3 but I kept up on the "goings on" through various websites.
Our industry should be concerned AND optimistic at the same time.
Concern: The home publishers are now including peripherals with games to give the home player the "arcade" experience. DDR pads, Guitar Hero guitars, Beat mania turntables/ keyboards. This should concern every operator as these arcade only style games are now available for the home market and worse yet, they're really good games. Guitar Hero is far better than Guitar Freaks (although I'd love to play Guitar Freaks 5). It is only a matter of time before all coin op game manuacturers go to where the "cheese has moved". How many coin-op only video game manufactuers are left?
Reasons for optimism:
$600 for a PS3? Are you kidding me? $80 for a game????? These console manufacturers could potentially be pricing themselves out of the market. If coin-op (on premise entertainment) is to thrive again, operators need to embrace online technology, tournament play, and most importantly...OPERATORS NEED TO RUN PROMOTIONS. The Sony PS3 cannot to what operators can do with their existing product. Not yet at least.
As far as the combo E3 and ASI show idea goes, dream on. Coin op is a fart in the wind to these guys. Great idea though. I'd love to see it become a reality. Maybe we should start by combining our two trade shows first.
Just a thought :)
Steve, In response to your question as to why TC4 was shown at E3. Pretty simple answer. The game will not be available to the consumer market for a year or more. The game was shown to promote the Arcade game to the gobs of gamers that attended the show. Maybe the operators that purchase it will benefit from the gamers who loved it actually looking for it on location and playing it.
FC - Namco
I agree with the 'fart in the wind', but did you see the size of the Retro arcade theatre that E3 gathered themselves!
If our association went up to E3 and said - "hey guys save you some bucks we will bring the arcade machines next year!" we could slip in through the back door and re-generate interest.
This is like some of the proposals I have been throwing at the trade associations to promote our industry!
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Seems that we may have been a little a head of ourselves - news is that E3 is to be 'down scaled' smaller, more press focused!
Looks like consumer has a problem!
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