It's That Time Of The Year Again!

This year's E3 is very quickly taking shape and it's starting to get pretty damn huge. Information seems to be getting released at a breakneck pace, I can barely keep up with it honestly. And that pace is only going to get faster as the days lead up to the actual event. For now I at least want to preview some of the big things we can expect to see covered when the big three step out onto their respective stages for their annual press conferences.

Nintendo

Right off the bat we know Nintendo is quite possibly going to have the most interesting conference of the year. Normally I never look forward to a Nintendo conference because they have a certain formula to them and an odd pacing. For years Nintendo used to trot out a representative who would go over various facts and figures displaying how their business has grown over the last year. For a while it was basically Nintendo boasting about how much money their handheld division was printing for them with the Gamecube's less than stellar performance. The Wii seemingly turned things around and made Nintendo's conferences just a little more exciting. But here we are five years down the road from the Wii's release; sales have slowed but the recently released 3DS is more than likely picking up the slack despite some of the sales not living up to expectations.

New Technology, New Experiences

My mini write up on L.A. Noire for my last post really got me thinking that I want to expand on my coverage of the game. However I realized there's one part of that coverage that I wanted to dedicate a whole post to. Lately I've been trying to keep the talk on the blog a little casual but today we're going to get a bit more technical. That is to say, this post is going to explore the new motion capture technologies that are driving forward today's entertainment. Once again I'll just warn you this will get a little technical but you'll have a better understanding of the tech that's powering the games you're playing.

In my best of 2010 post I kinda gushed over one of the few PS3 games I played last year, Heavy Rain. While the finished product didn't look exactly like the cutting edge graphics from Sony's infamous E3 2005 video, they came pretty damn close. Quantic Dream may have just released the game last year but about four years ago at E3 2006 they released a tech demo that showed off just what their new motion capture technology was capable of. Not only could they do full body capture but their new system would allow them to accurately capture a person's face, providing even more accuracy for the end product. The following demo was just a sampling of what they would soon be capable of.