E3 Reaction: Microsoft vs. Sony: The Console War Is Over, For Now
That’s Microsoft and Sony out of the way, then, and in immediate hindsight it’s tempting to say that they opted for the same approach overall. Both conferences were relatively conservative affairs compared to the pageantry and showboating of previous years (apparently you don’t know what you’ve got with a space poncho until it’s gone), as both companies presumably played the strongest hand they could muster while keeping a lot in reserve for the inevitable unveiling of next-generation consoles in 2013. However, upon closer inspection there were a number of stark contrasts. One of the most interesting was the way both companies bookended their conferences. Sony chose two of its biggest and most bankable studio assets, first-party Naughty Dog and second-party Quantic Dream, but both developers presented brand new IP. Beyond: Two Souls and The Last of Us may share a lot of DNA with Heavy Rain and the Uncharted series respectively, but only in the same way that there are common threads between films made by the same director, like the aesthetic sensibilities of David Lynch movies or the unashamed marriage of spectacle and accessibility in James Cameron’s output. Microsoft, meanwhile, began with 343 Industries, a studio it has assembled at huge expense by hiring some of the most talented developers around the world… in order to make a sequel. And not even a long-awaited sequel or a story with a lot of headroom, but the sixth game in a series that we’ve previously been told had completed its narrative arc. To end its conference, it chose a third-party title bound to its platform by commercial fealty – the enormously successful but artistically moribund Call of Duty. Read more…
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