Sony has admitted that it "totally under-represented" its PS Vita handheld during its E3 2012 conference on Monday.
When the original Wii hardware launched, several important pieces of the puzzle were missing – not that we knew it at the time. Wii MotionPlus controllers did not exist in 2006, nor did the Balance Board (now in over 43m homes worldwide), and both components have shaped the overall Wii experience considerably. In contrast, the late-2012 launch of Wii U will see the new hardware arriving in a more fully formed manner.
ZombiU has appeared three times so far this E3. A gory CG trailer, shown during Ubisoft's press conference on Monday, revealed its London setting and piqued our interest; another trailer, sadly also CG and aired during Nintendo's conference today, showed the ways in which it makes use of the Wii U GamePad. It's the below gameplay demo, though, coming hot on the heels of Nintendo's middling E3 conference, which has propelled it to the upper echelons of our Wii U most wanted list.
So, we got one answer to the big E3 Nintendo questions. If Reggie Fils-Aime was a zombie, he’d say, “I like French food”. Zombies don't talk, of course, though we suspect that were Reggie somehow infected, he'd find a way. To the rest of the questions the faithful keenly posited on across the Internet before and during Nintendo’s E3 2012 press conference, we’re none the wiser: Wii U Zelda? Animal Crossing?
Throughout E3 2012, God Of War and Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe is writing a daily diary for us. Now he's left Eat, Sleep, Play, he's working on an unannounced project which, by his own admission, means he'll be spending much of the show in meetings he can't tell us about.
Nintendo devoted a significant proportion of its E3 2012 conference to Nintendo Land, which NOA president Reggie Fils-Aime said was intended to be the Wii U's equivalent of Wii Sports.
Nintendo kicked off its E3 2012 conference with Pikmin 3 on Wii U, Shigeru Miyamoto taking to the stage to demonstrate the game.
Gameplay looks similar to the previous two games, and you'll still be in charge of a 100-strong swarm of Pikmin, but there are a few interesting additions.
First up, the new rock Pikmin adds a harder-headed creature to your flock, enabling you to break hard objects more easily.
So we've had a few hours - and, crucially, some sleep - to mull over the events of the first day of E3 2012. As you've doubtless already read, we weren't exactly blown away by Sony's conference, and Microsoft's left an even worse taste in the mouth.
If you own a Vita, you have our sympathy. Sony's E3 2012 conference was expected to focus heavily on its ailing handheld; there would be announcement after announcement, surely, in a bid to revive the fortunes of a console which, in its native Japan, is regularly outsold by its predecessor PSP.
Quantic Dream CEO David Cage took the first slot in Sony's E3 2012 conference to show brand new project, Beyond: Two Souls.
Quantic Dream CEO David Cage took the first slot in Sony's E3 2012 conference to show brand new project, Beyond: Two Souls.
Ubisoft saved the best for last in its E3 conference, closing the show with the announcement of Watch Dogs, a stunning thirdperson action game in development at its Montreal studio.