Welcome back to Wednesday, or as I like to call it, Friday Minus 2. We're in the middle of E3, and the major press conferences are over, and now the show floor is open for those privileged few to wander around and see what the developers have to offer. But it's time to look back to yesterday, and the Nintendo and Sony conferences. Into the breach! :P

Nintendo Press Conference

Definitely a strong and solid showing from Nintendo this year, with relatively few distinctly casual games, and many more which would appeal to Nintendo's core demographic of players. They began with The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, for which Shigeru Miyamoto materialised/teleported onto the stage to show off some gameplay. Unfortunately, there were evidently some teething technical issues, and Miyamoto had some trouble shooting the bow or getting sword swipes quite right. From listening to the reactions of other people who have played the demo, it seems that technically it is proficient, and that the difficulties that happens during the conference were mainly a localised incident. Reggie Fils-Aime did most of the actual hosting, and Cammie Dunaway was nowhere to be seen. The Wii Vitality Sensor was also not mentioned whatsoever, suggesting that its development has either been put on hold or even cancelled. Not surprised, considering how event Satoru Iwata didn't seem to know what it would do last year. Nintendo's roll of games continued with Mario Sports Mix, which is a min-games collection, and Wii Party, which is a mini-games collection (featuring Balance Boat!). Those represented some of the most casual-oriented games Nintendo announced, and were mostly uninspiring.

More games included Disney's Epic Mickey, which looked like an interesting Mickey Mouse platformer where you could jump inside cartoons, and Kirby's Epic Yarn, which had an extremely cute art design and showed Kirby being Kirby. The nostalgia was well and truly being churned by this point; as Nintendo went on to announce another GoldenEye, as well as Donkey Kong Country Returns. The music for the former was probably the best thing about my first impressions of the game. Not sure what to think about GoldenEye, as too much time has probably progressed for it still to be the game-changer it once was. Then, to much smoke and mirrors, the 3DS was announced and displayed, with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata coming to the stage in order to hold it up. Apparently it has a 3D depth slider which will change the 3D effect visible, and comes with a slide pad, which is essentially an analogue stick. And to go with it, there were some games including Kid Icarus: Uprising, which has been suspected for a long time and gained some rather large cheers from the crowd. Then Iwata ran down the list of developers who agreed to make 3DS games, including Square Enix making another Kingdom Hearts, and Kojima working on yet another Metal Gear. The highlight of the whole conference was the advert for the 3DS, where Iwata and Miyamoto were swallowed by the handheld, and Reggie was burnt to a crisp by Bowser. All in all, a good show, but once again, nothing utterly brand new that didn't rely on existing franchises.

Sony Press Conference

Of all the developers, Sony easily showed off the most games-per-minute during their conference. There were so many games mentioned I'm finding it rather difficult to recall them all, partly because for some of the conference there was some extremely bad lag and buffering issues happening in both GameSpot's and YouTube's feed. Started off with a little Killzone 3, also in 3D (but you need glasses for this kind), The Sly Collection, Shawn White Snowboarding, the new Mortal Kombat, Tron Evolution and more being mentioned in quick succession. There was also naturally a lot of talk about the PlayStation Move, Sony's answer to the motion control question. The first game they showed for this was Socrery, which felt a bit like a Harry Potter rip-off where you cast spells and defeat enemies. The Move will act as a wand, which is somewhat prophetic. Tiger Woods also moves with the Move, with a Golfing game that looks suspiciously like a golfing game. Move will be coming this September, and will be selling for $49.99, plus $29.99 for the navigation controller. This seems like a rather bad idea, considering that you will normally need both, so selling them separately for different prices doesn't make a whole lot of sense. One "surprise" was Valve's Gabe Newell, who is/was one of the PlayStation's critics, popping up and saying that Portal 2 and Steamworks will be coming to the PS3. There was also a great trailer for Portal 2, featuring another great line from GLaDOS; "I think we can put aside our differences, for science… You monster."

The highlight of the conference for me was probably Kevin Butler (or should I say, the actor that plays Kevin Butler), came out and gave a short and rousing speech about gaming. GT5 also finally was given a release date for this coming November, which is good considering the enormous amount of time that game has been in development. Jack Tretton held the floor for most of the conference and was solid, only occasionally showing his nervousness. LittleBigPlanet 2 made an appearance as well, and it looked pretty good, continuing that same Indie vibe the first game had. Perhaps the biggest issue with Sony's conference was that it was too long; reaching a full two hours. With so much being discussed, by the time Twisted Metal was shown off at the very end of the conference, complete with an ice cream van, I had quite forgotten most of the stuff that had happened in the first hour. All in all, Sony showed off a huge amount, and is clearly on the ball for their development cycle this coming year. They were very keen to stress that the PS3 apparently does everything.

There were a lot of things shown off on GameSpot's first stage show, but since I didn't watch all of it past midnight, I'm not best placed to tell you about it. I suggest watching it yourself would be the best solution. Tomorrow, I'll hopefully bring you details on the games I was interested in specifically at this year's E3, before we finish up on Friday.

Have a nice day. :)