DUCKING HELL, IT’S THE PS3
2005
THIS WAS supposed to be Xbox 360’s launch party. And there was quite a bash. The Killers headlined – and were largely ignored. You can’t ignore a
shitload of ducks though. The famous PS3 demo had its roots in a 2000 PS2 demo which showed a single yellow rubber ducky floating in a bath.
The 2005/PS3 version started with one. And then they just kept coming. The bath filled with ducks, then overflowed with ducks, all bobbing and floating and falling individually, and giving the crowd a gasp-inducing glimpse of the new console’s real-time processing power.
Sony’s Phil Harrison then informed the crowd, seemingly in all seriousness, that this was “only possible with LOD technology. For those of you who don’t know, LOD stands for Lots Of Ducks”.
2007- 2008
TUMBLEWEED
2009
IN MAY 2006 MCVran a front page story pointing out that, whilst in the middle of supposedly tough times, the industry was
spending $100m on E3. Next year, it was cancelled. Well, not quite cancelled, but stripped back to the point where it might as
www.mcvuk.com
bloody well have been. Within our little world, this led to a (still) running joke that MCV’s managing editor Lisa Carter had ‘killed E3’. 2008 saw even further retrenchment. Less acreage, less flash, fewer visitors – but loads and loads of negative comments. Having previously decided that E3 was too big, the industry now railed against the downsizing and demanded its shiny, noisy toy back.
Peter Moore, by now the
president of EA Sports, labelled the event as “soulless”. Ubisoft’s US president Laurent Detoc described it as “like a pipe-fitters’ show in a basement”. Sega of America chief Simon Jeffery disagreed strongly, claiming that the scaled-back show was much more like “a large hospital corridor”.
EA CEO John Riccitiello said, simply: “I hate E3 like this.”
MORE Z, LESS ZZZZZZ
AFTER TWO years of austerity, E3 Expo returned
like a sailor on shore
leave and went glamour crazy.
Microsoft wheeled out Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to herald The Beatles: Rock Band. But the hottest ticket of the week was to Activision’s DJ Heroparty featuring a two hour set from Jay-Z and Eminem.
June 3rd 2011 37
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96