From E3: Live Anywhere, Smartphones, Etc.

There’s a lot of excitement budding at this year’s E3 with promises of new games and technologies that are certain to cause higher interest over the next year.

Nintendo is very happy with sales and performance of their portable DS game units. They expect to introduce a new improved model DS Lite sometime in June. Over 100 games are promised before the end of the year. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team will be out in September, while newly announced titles include Starfox DS, Yoshi’s Island 2, and DK: King of Swing DS.

Bill Gates, Billionaire

Microsoft’s Bill Gates anounced Live Anywhere, an initiative that connects users of Microsoft’s various platforms such as Xbox Live, the upcoming Windows Vista PC operating system, and Windows Mobile. It will allow for cross-platform gameplay across devices. Pending Vista’s introduction, Vista users will be able to enter Xbox Live, offering a consistent online game experience. Gates showed how players using a PC and Xbox 360 could play against one another. He also discussed gameplay possibilities with Windows Mobile compatible cell phones.

Speaking of cell phones, Nokia is at E3 to demonstrate the next generation of mobile games, for use with its advanced line of N-series smartphones as well as a new user interface. About 15 games arer anticipated by Spring 2007.

Game manufacturers are aggressively moving ahead to expand their MMOG capabilities. MMOG stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Game. Blizzard announced that the Draenei will be the new Alliance race making it’s debut in the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, The Burning Crusade. Among the more anticipated all-new online games expected to be introduced over the next six months is Sigil Games Online & Sony Online Entertainment’s Vanguard: Saga of Heroes for PC. The game is being made by ex-EverQuest and EverQuest 2 developers, and has been touted as the spiritual successor to those titles. Whether you venture to live up to the challenges of new worlds or go back to survive during the age of Rome in Sony Online’s Gods and Heroes (PC), you can expect lots of new possibilities and excitement ahead for online game players.

Zelda, Princess

Fantasy becomes closer to reality with the introduction of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for GameCube which will add capabilities of new one-hand controller technology. Activision game software’s new line-up for the upcoming Sony PlayStation 3 system will take advantage of the hardware’s multi-core processing to deliver smoother, faster gaming experiences that will closely resemble feature film quality values. The company will launch games for Nintendo’s Wii system that will fully utilize the Wii’s revolutionary freehand-style controller by offering more immersive gameplay.

This entry was posted by Dr. Iz on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 3:38 pm