Last time on the Forum Show, we asked for reactions on the newer, slimmer E3. Words were had. You can see some of them further down in this article!

This week: Would you pay a monthly fee to play a Pokémon MMORPG? It's potentially another license to print money if it's a hit, and some would say Pokémon was made for it. But would it be fun enough to play to be worth like ten bucks a month? Your posts will speak volumes.

We're not giving out a prize this week, other than our endless adoration of cuddly forum posters. Last week's winner was Patchkid15! He wins a pile of E3 swag!

Here's some perusable posts from the previous postathon:

Mashiro posted: This thread is going to be massively filled shortly so I'll take my chances now and give my 2 cents =)

The show in general lack that big *umph* E3 used to have. It felt way more tame with few surprises and lacked that overall feeling of excitement that the E3s of yesteryear had. With that said the show still allowed the gaming press to get news to us and that's what matters most. The only thing I didn't like was what the poor people who were there had to go through to GET to the various events. Centralize the event next year so the reporters can do their job without running all over the city.

The press conference and announcements for Nintendo was fairly tame and it needed a little more air time for Super Mario Galaxy and Mario Kart Wii. The Wii Fit board was unique and interesting and if used right by Nintendo and 3rd parties could certainly open up new avenues of gaming much like the Wii Remote and DS touch screen has. The one thing I felt they should have announced was Smash Bros. Online confirmation That's the one thing the show REALLY lacked that I felt it needed. Especially given the fact that Reggie went into a whole online speech thing.

I was happy that we got the dates for SMG and SSBB though and the Wii Zapper was also nice. The prospect of getting it and a game for $20 was also a good announcement.

On the competition side I think MS floundered a bit and Sony showed what it needed to show, the games. MS's limited edition Xbox 360 was weak and the crowd didn't seem to like it much and the Halo 3 trailer didn't seem to get much attention either.

Overall E3 was ok. Not great. Not horrible. Just ok. I think the new format combined with the timing of this years event (Sooooo close to GDC and TGS) didn't help the show either. If it's pushed back to May and put in a centralized location I think we will see better results.

Spak-Spang posted: This E3 was different and felt like an experiment rather than a well thought out expo. The whole idea was to make E3 a smaller event which would help it be more media friendly and developer friendly. In many ways it failed and in many ways it succeeded...but it was an experiment and these results will help the next E3 be even better.

Truthfully, I think that if E3 had just kept the numbers attending the event smaller, and created a few extra rules for each developers area (ranging from sound levels, props allowed, and other overall ascetics) that E3 could have been in a single location again, and allowed each developer to buy an area as large as they wanted to display games.

Instead we got editors driving all across town to meetings and developers showing less games because it just isn't as important to show all of the games being worked on anymore. Yes, we are living in an age that Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony can easily invite any media they like to sample games throughout the year...but that still isn't an event designed to attract not only gaming press but simple just the press. Larger events will always have greater potential to get your message and games known by a larger demographic of people.

Moving on to the actual big three E3 presence, I was definitely disappointed with all three. Microsoft and Sony both pulled out great conferences that showed future games coming out that we already knew about...but had few surprises. In fact, you could drop the exclusive games coming to the systems and their conference felt the same. Great games coming out with HD graphics and we are future. Microsoft and Sony really are going for the exact same market.

One more side note about both these conferences is they both heavily discussed 3rd party games and less 1st party. When I read a press conference about Microsoft I want most of the information to be about what Microsoft is doing in the industry, not about games I can play on any of the systems...eventually.

Nintendo failed its press conference in completely different ways than Microsoft and Sony. Nintendo focused too much on the media hype they had last year, and their success courting the new gamer. This would have been fine if they had equal time with their gamers lineup...but they decided to not even mention a game releasing early fall Battalion Wars 2!!! Why? That game definitely needs some press time and hype before it comes out or it will not be the sleeper hit Nintendo desires, but a completely unknown release.

Nintendo's questionable press conference focus did lead to a few actual surprise announcements at the conference that generally created some excitement for me. First, the nice 32 player online Call of Duty is a nice announcement, the Wii Zapper redesign looks very cool...but still needs minor tweaking, Mario Kart Wii with online play is a huge announcement and that it will release early next year is a godsend. Finally, the big announcement Wii Fit is a love/hate announcement for gamers. I am personally very excited about this device, but another friend of mine is loathing Nintendo right now because he believes Nintendo just doesn't care about the gamer anymore.

Bottom line is this E3 was average...but it really wasn't the fault of the press conferences but a direct result from the restructuring of E3. And despite any of the problems one may have had with the event or press conferences there is no denying that several great games are coming this year on every system, and that is very good for the entire gaming market, but bad for the gamers wallet.

Caliban posted: Honestly I don't think anyone here in this forum, except for those that had the chance to go, can say much about the E3 that just occured.

From what I've reading there have been many complaints about how much gaming reporters had to travel to reach their appointments, finding a parking space, etc. The good part was that this year it was limited to a few 3K to 5K invitees, so there was ample time to sample the games either on suites or at the hangar, which in the end is also good for us readers because we can get a more detailed impression for each game, it's a definite plus. So, why not move E3 to Vegas and have it done all in one hotel that conveniently also has convention halls, there would be no hassles to get on time to appointments, they could even have more hands-on with the playable demos, even better if around that hotel there were other hotels to accomadate the 3K to 5K people within walking distance to the E3 Hotel.

The press conference was the typical Nintendo press conference, Miyamoto shows up, current presidents of NoA and NoJ also appear, all normal in my eyes, what makes it a spectacle is how they decide to make their big announcments.

As for the anouncments themselves, I think Nintendo could have done a little better but it was still good because we got firm dates for Galaxy and Smash Bros, they are obviously holding out for Leipzig in concern to the announcement of other games so no biggie and we just have to wait until mid August. No 2008 titles? Well there was Mario Kart, but honestly I think they put in that announcement just to put in some new fresh hardcore gamer news, yeah just to shut us up. Oh and they obviously had to cater to the mainstream audience, they started it so now they can't just abandon it that easily, they have to build that confidence from the mainstream audience so that they are assured for future Nintendo consoles, the mainstream media was there so they also had to be fed and they are good "free" PR for Nintendo because in the next few days after the press conference alot of the mainstream media was praising how Nintendo won over their competitors with the anouncment of WiiFit and whatnot. Remember, Nintendo and 3rd parties need that mainstream cash so that our beloved hardcore games can be made, Miyamoto said it himself that these mainstream games can be done quite easily while working at the same time on more complex games.

Nintendo's competitors? Both showed a few cool offerings.

Microsoft had Mass Effect, Bioshock, Resident Evil 5 (which could so easily be done for Wii if Capcom would reuse and revamp the RE4 engine), and some other stuff, their main focus was 2007 which was a good choice because they have some promising games coming out, so I'm guessing by the end of this year we will have some new 2008 announcments. They should still fix their production lines so that no more red lights get shown, but alas that's their problem, but I bet they are loosing customers just because of that.

Sony, well the only game that really impressed me was EchoChrome, of course many of the other games that they showed looked impressive like GT5 coming out in 2020(j/k), etc, I still think it's ridiculous that some media are saying Killzone 2 is close to the target render. The PSP slim still doesn't make me want to get a PSP, so I guess they failed in that respect hah.

Overall, I am satisfied.

Ian Sane posted: "The one thing I felt they should have announced was Smash Bros. Online confirmation That's the one thing the show REALLY lacked that I felt it needed. Especially given the fact that Reggie went into a whole online speech thing."

I interpretted the silence to mean that SSB isn't online, particularly since they mentioned how Mario Kart was. Nintendo can only annouce something real and they likely were not going to state what features a game doesn't have. Now that sucks but that's a different issue unrelated to E3.

I found E3 disappointing as most of the games were stuff we already knew about. Now they're cool games and I'm very interested in them but it still makes for a dull E3. Wii Fit has beaten Pac-Man Vs. as Nintendo lamest game to dominate an E3 presentation. There was a lot of emphasis on non-gaming. Nintendo doesn't even seem fit to leave the "gamer games" for gamers as nearly each one demoed was followed with some line about making the game more suitable for a wider audience and such. In other words Nintendo wants damn near EVERYTHING they make to appeal to non-gamers in some way. It's not at all surprising but it sucks nonetheless.

Pale posted: Ian, we knew previously that they were having troubles implementing the online mode in Smash Bros. I take their silence to mean they are still haven't trouble, not that they pulled it all together.

I guarantee you Nintendo is aware of the amount of pissing and moaning that would occur if Smash wasn't online. If the feature isn't in the final game, I'm sure it has a technical reason, not that "Nintendo is stupid" like so many people will claim.

I'd rather have no online at all than an online mode that is basically a lag filled crap-shoot.

thatguy posted: This E3 made me sick. The whole thing, mostly.

Why was E3 pushed back to July? The ESA said it was so retailers could get their hands on more complete builds, since, afterall, E3 is for retailers, so they know how much of each title to order. They get to taste the games early.

Oops, there's one problem here. In order to downsize costs, E3 invites were reduced. Most publications received a few less invites, NWR included. What's interesting? The hardest hit group of invites: Retailers.

"Now wait," you might say, "If E3 was downsized and moved to July for the retailers, then why did they get receive the lowest amount of invitations?"

I don't know. It seems pretty crappy to me. This year, we got much less news, much less hands on info, much less time for our reporters to play games, and large online, pre-made news packets handed to reporters. Since most game-playing was done in individual hotel rooms, the whole thing felt like a cheap media-day film promotion.

None of the big three talked about much new. Nintendo by far put the most out there with the balance board, but that, honestly, doesn't convert well for a show, and is something best received for hands-on impressions. With a shorter show that was spread out amongst hotel rooms, there wasn't exactly a ton of time for those, was there?

In my opinion, whoever decided to downsize E3 did it wrong. We've heard MS and Sony pushed hard for it because Nintendo really one-upped them both last year. We've heard it's for money, we've heard it's because of retailers. But let's be honest, MS, Sony, and Nintendo really went overboard in their press conferences, with several giant screens and music + special effects. Retailers had a reduced presence at the show, more than anyone else, so it isn't that one, either. And honestly, it can't be for the journalists if less were invited, and overall, there's been less actual news this year.

Think back to GDC. We learned more from GDC than we did at E3 this year, and GDC isn't even for handing out news at all. It's ridiculous and broken now. they need a complete reformat, or they need to kill it, because E3 sucked this year. Someone's been lying to us about reasons, someones been lying to us about effectiveness, someone's been making up some terrible ideas. Honestly, if we're going to go the hotel room route, let everyone do their own thing. It'll be cheaper than renting out some sort of convention center, and more effective, because the media won't be pressed for time or distracted. I'll admit that past E3 had long lines and cost money to developers and publishers, but we sure got a lot more info out of them. Why not just force people not to give swag? Why not cut the costs somewhere else, instead of destroying costs elsewhere. Sure, take out the booth babes, let the media pay for a strip club if they want it. Allow some rich, less famous VIPs entry at a cost. Something like that, because as of now, this new E3 was just stupid. Whoever devised it should be fired immediately. Let them work for the film industry. Video games don't work like movies. Not at all, and their media works differently, too. When will people realize this?

NotRimmer posted: E3 sucked. The press conferences sucked, there were very few notable announcements (and of the notable announcements that they did have, most were simply release dates), and worst of all, there was a complete lack of booth babes. I don't know about you guys, but one of my favorite things about E3 (aside from actually photographing booth babes) was going to E3girls.com after it ended and checking out all the sexy, sexy ladies that I missed out on.

I hope enough people complain that they have no choice but to bring back the old E3.

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