The only thing better than E3 and WWDC… Their coverage.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Written by: Jed

It’s been a great past couple of weeks in the world of video games and technology. Microsoft actually released a half-decent search engine, with a half-decent name in Bing. Google continues to revolutionize the Internet with their Wave. And of course the big boys of the news cycles, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and Apple’s WWDC. Neither of which really disappointed. Big games, big announcements, few surprises, and a lot of new controllers introduced. All great, all exciting – all covered to death, and I loved it.

Let’s start with E3. There are two things I rarely do; watch G4, and wake up before noon. E3 coverage made me do both. The conferences could have been shorter; they could have been more entertaining (I’m looking at you Nintendo!) – but it was all actual and relevant content. A nice change from Japanese game shows, outdated reruns of Reviews on the Run, and a text-to-speech translation of the day’s geek blog headlines in EP Daily. For that whole week, nothing was watered down. We saw G4 personalities talk about things they actually cared about– although watching and hearing Olivia Munn act excited about games she had no intention of seeing ever again was rough at times. The point I’m trying to make here is, that’s why I subscribe to G4; the latest news in the tech, and coverage that actually matter; and for that week, they provided just that. Live and uninterrupted broadcasts of all the keynotes, interviews with game developers and live demos of the biggest upcoming releases – how can you go wrong? I don’t know if there’s even a Sports-equivalent to what E3 is, I doubt many (American) football fans pay attention to the week leading up to the big game – nor do they probably pay attention to the pregame show. Despite the fact that a lot of the bigger announcements were leaked prior to the event, it didn’t subtract from my anticipation of seeing them firsthand (on TV, if that makes any sense?). And it wasn’t only G4 that stepped it up. Even my favourite (thanks to Anthony) video game podcast, the Bombcast upped their greatness. Daily podcasts and even microcasts – not to mention the countless videos that have been posted on their site. Then there were the live and real time discussion threads on FriendFeed about every conference. Not to mention (although I am) the frequent discussions of the potential of Project Natal on numerous non-gaming tech podcasts. The talk was about E3 almost everywhere I turned. No stone was left unturned, and though that meant a lot of conversations around one thing, well bam! – it was nice to see people of all sorts excited about video games; I mean Kudo was on Jimmy Fallon? While E3 itself is still closed to pedestrians, I don’t feel like I missed a single beat.

Earlier this week, we got the Apple keynote at WWDC. Like the typical Apple event, I didn’t expect a live TV broadcast – but a pirate/rogue video stream with decent audio sufficed. Other than the iPhone, I haven’t had much experience with the Apple product line. Even my jump onto the iPhone was fairly recent (December 2008) – but that’s never prevented me from getting excited about the frenzy usually surrounding Apple announcements. I was a subscriber to MacBreak Weekly a good year (maybe more), before Steve Jobs got any of my money. It’s computers; it’s technology; so it’s interesting to me.  Much like E3, a lot of what was to be announced was in some ways already known, ie. the iPhone’s annual refresh. But once again, knowing and seeing are completely different things. So around noon, the TWiT Live stream was open and search I did for the best live blogging sources. As the keynote happened, I had four windows open. One for the TWiT Live stream and commentary of a pirate stream; one for Gizmodo’s live blog; one for gdgt’s; and one for Gmail. I don’t think I’ve appreciated the real time web any more, than during that keynote. Automatic/real time refreshing is conveniently genius. The only thing missing was Google Wave – but there’s always the next iPhone revision (probably next year?). Once the new iPhone was announced, all of my Twitter and FriendFeed streams were consumed by it. I’m sure it has something to do with my tech-centred subscriptions and follows, but even some of my random “friends” on Facebook were talking about it. And as a result, like the week prior, every minute detail of the keynote was covered to death. Discussions surrounded everything from why the only thing holding the iPhone back is its carrier; the fury surrounding upgrade costs for 3G owners; and the bigger picture of the smart phone market following the Palm Pre release and 3G S announcement. Even a Rogers and Fido rep on Twitter was overwhelmed with @ questions and comments, and I’m sure new followers (including me). It was good to see universal buzz around a single gadget, but it was Apple we were dealing with so I shouldn’t be too surprised. I can’t wait to see what commotion the actual releases of the new OS and hardware will cause next week.

What events like E3 and any Apple Keynote show, is that people still yearn for that communal experience. The “live” and interactive model is the new thing online. Tools like Twitter are great for saying what you just had for breakfast, but it’s even more valuable when you’re feeding it real content and interacting (some users forget about the “@” symbol). And when you finally realize that having a half-decent conversation in 140 character messages is nearly impossible – join FriendFeed (I mean there’s even been a live and lively discussion, strictly for NBA playoff games).

For everything E3, I would highly suggest checking out the Giant Bomb website, and podcast (look back to the E3 series). And for everything Apple and iPhone, I’m sure the Engadgets of the world have you covered. But for in-depth discussion, there’s MacBreak Weekly, and this week’s gdgt Palm-pre round table, which ironically stars the iPhone.