3D E3

The annual hi-tech gaming festival of choice ‘kicks off’ this week with the usual showcasing of half-ready, half-baked and, occasionally, brilliant games and gaming technology.

Nintendo’s plans to show the 3D Nintendo 3DS and the ‘eve of conference’ appearance of video footage for a handful of 3D games on the PS3 can’t be considered surprises. Microsoft’s decision to brand their Project Natal motion technology as Kinect is also unsurprising, apart from the choice of such a weak brand name.

The promise of a slimline X360 and possibly another update to the PS3 in the autumn are equally unexciting. So why all the fuss over a show where everyone announces their plans well before the show and a good six months before any of the ‘innovations’ arrive? It’s usually all about gaining exposure and market share, but there’s a much more industry-wide agenda at work this year.

Genuine 3D, in the form of holographic technologies, are currently at least 5-7 years away from the product line. That leaves hardware companies like Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung and Panasonic with little to sell into saturated console and TFT panel markets. At the same time, content developers, (including many of the same companies), seem to have few, if any, new ideas on how to develop the next generation of videogames.

The industry-wide reaction to this lack of novelty is to refine and revive older technologies, to allow the repackaging of the same fixed-narrative content and gameplay which has been on sale over the last decade. For example, the iPad is already replete with relaunched versions of games that wouldn’t be thought good enough for an ageing PC. Along similar lines, Kinect technology merely updates the hand-waving, sand-dancing interactive TV games that didn’t catch on several years ago.

The 3D ‘revolution’ is likely to be even less original, as Microsoft and Sony try to persuade early adopters to buy $1000+ 3D TVs to view recycled gameplay. This approach is meant to lead into rapid development of the 3D TV market in economies already laden with sovereign and personal debt.

For many gamers the E3 2010 innovation most likely to make a difference to their gameplay is Sony’s Move. The PS3′s new motion-sensing system may not be novel in itself, but it does seem likely to deliver the combination of hardware, peripherals and, most importantly, software, which is required to offer a ‘complete’ platform.

Nintendo’s developers have singularly failed to build on the success of the Wii’s motion controllers by offering a succession of below average or simply awful titles. Zelda was fun, Okami was recycled but good and that’s about it. Years later Nintendo are planning to use E3 2010 to show a few more clips of what to expect when Zelda 2 finally arrives. Looks like too little, too late!

Sony have a stack of high quality software, plenty of motion-control games developers and a motion control system that is, apparently, more accurate and quicker to react than Nintendo’s system. Titles like Assassin’s Creed 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Final Fantasy 13 could all play well with motion control upgrades, while the sheer number of developer signed up to Sony and the Move system should result in original titles offering novel gameplay.

It’d be great to be wrong, as we’d all like to see some genuine originality and a new direction for games and gameplay. However, in reality most of the week is going to be spent telling us we should be getting excited about 3D and motion technologies developed decades ago.