Cameron took to the stage to wax lyrical about his
new film, Avatar, and the video game adaptation
Ubisoft was working on.
So confident were they in the magical new world
they had created, they neglected to show a single
video of it on the stage. Or screenshot. Or anything,
in fact. Instead we got James Cameron standing
and talking to the audience for half an hour with
nothing but a logo behind him.
3. You will be sucked
Konami, 2010
It doesn’t sound any less silly no matter how many
times you repeat it.
The Wii had been a rampant success for Nintendo,
so when the company took to the stage at E3 2011
to unveil its new console, expectations were high.
The initial demonstration videos were promising -
but it all went downhill from there, starting with
Reggie’s reveal of the name: Wii U. Nintendo were
on rocky ground already; was this an expansion
to the Wii? A peripheral? Was it just a controller?
A tablet? Were there any actual games? None of
Nintendo’s messaging around the reveal made a lot
of sense, and the confusion only grew as time went
by, the company unable to define what the Wii U
was actually all about and why anyone would buy it.
Consequently, not many people did.
1. Killzone 2
Sony, 2005
Extreeeeeme.
There are few words that can describe the train
wreck of Konami’s 2010 Press Conference, where
the publisher, in its wisdom, decided to put it’s lead
developers out on the E3 stage, and make them speak
in English, or at least Engrish. The result was one of
the most surreal experiences ever - there are various
highlight reels, but I highly recommend watching
the full conference to get a full sense of how bizarre
the entire thing was. Particular highlights included
a developer giving another speaker a death stare
over his shoulder, the most lifeless on-stage dancing
ever, and Ninety-Nine Nights director Tak Fuji
declaring that if you press X X X Y Y Y , “you will be
sucked.” Promises promises, Fuji-san.
How to treat your audience like idiots 101. At E3
2005 Sony came on stage to announce Killzone 2,
coupled with an impossibly good looking video
which host Jack Tretton confirmed to the audience
was running on PS3 hardware. Only, it wasn’t. The
footage was a ‘target render’ produced by Guerilla
Games, intended as a visual guide for the developers
of what they were aiming for, with a best-guess at
what the PS3’s hardware would be capable of.
Whilst the finished game did look great, it certainly
didn’t look like the Target Render, which is why
we’ve come to be very wary of anything purporting
to be a gameplay trailer nowadays.
2. It’s called… Wii U
Nintendo, 2011
Remember Killzone 2? It didn’t look like this.
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