WhatIfGaming’s Overall Best Of E3 Awards 2008
Another year and another awards season. E3 was packed with exciting memories you have all seen (some still to be posted), and rooms filled with the hottest and most anticipated titles to date. It was certainly a great time, and now that time is over. It’s time to look forward, ahead to newer and better releases, and to ennoble titles in this year’s WhatIfGaming’s Best Of E3 Awards 2008.
Criteria: The Best of E3 Awards, a subcategory for the WhatIfGaming Prizes, are given solely to those video games that demonstrate a pure excellence in the field for which they are not only nominated but also chosen. These awards only apply to playable games at E3 given a few exceptional categories.
Nomination & Selection Process: Compared with other site awards, the WhatIfGaming Prize nomination and selection process is long and extremely rigorous. This is the sole reason why WhatIfGaming Prizes have grown in importance over the years to become the most important prizes in their field. Forms, which amount to a personal and exclusive invitation, are sent to about over 1,000 selected individuals to invite them to submit nominations months in advance from the latest builds per video game. Self-nominations are disqualified. For WhatIfGaming Prizes, inquiries are sent to such people as developers, industry experts, analysts, freelance journalists among others. After our deadline passes, the nominations are chosen by permanent committee of 5 selected individuals and only the final stage of nominees remain per category. From all of these, a winner is chosen.
The names of the nominees are not publicly announced, and neither are they told that they have been considered for the WhatIfGaming Prize. Some are announced publicly by practice. Nomination records are revealed approximately 2 years after each respective award year.
WhatIfGaming E3 08′: Day 1 Pavillon Blitz
Here’s some footage we recorded for you guys. We don’t believe in generic stand and capture every time. We like to capture moments. This is one out of many to come. Flash Version Now Available For All Upcoming Videos Due To Popular Request
ESA E3 Downsize: A Move of Grandeur
We can just say that ESA’s 2,500 people invite-only model of the E3 Media and Business Summit as of 2007 is a digression to the dreams and happiness of that gamer who saves up everything for games, and has nothing more forward to look to during that time of the year than a massive event. The problem is that it isn’t true. In fact, the ESA’s decision to make E3 invite-only is one of the best decisions they could have ever made apart from catching pirates in the Northern regions of Seattle or some place like that. People have become tuned to the idea that the downsize is the worst possible thing that simply could have happened. The newest model of E3 has brought a sense of eventual prejudice and mostly misdirection from all fields that makes it apparent that many people are far from the realities of it.
Vampires Beware
505 Games today announced a deal with Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising to unleash an official new game based on the world-famous Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise, exclusively for the Nintendo DS.
Oxygen Games Announces Autumn and Winter Line-Up
Oxygen Games announced today its line-up of titles due to be released in 2008. The upcoming products continue the publisher’s strategy of creating exciting games for market segments in the mainstream consumer base, from real life simulation and, action adventure, to puzzlers and casual sports titles.
Family and social video games continue to increase in popularity with consumers, with retailers starting to offer up more opportunities dedicated to this casual gaming space. -Jim Scott, CEO
The Moment You’ve Been Waiting For..
What’s in your wallet?
..has finally arrived. Ubisoft has revealed their fiscal statements. Aw yeah. We know you you love monetary matters. (Were you hoping for a GTA4 review? Good one.) Alright fanboys, get ready to measure those e-penises
The 360 and DS tied with 26% of game sales for the full fiscal year running from April 2007 through March 2008. PS3 accounted for 20% in that period, while the Wii was only at 10% and PCs, 7%.
No surprises there. I mean did Ubisoft even release a game for the wii during that year besides Rayman Raving Rabbits 2? Not to mention Assassin’s Creed saw awesome sales on PS360 and everyone loves the DS, so that’s a given. Notice how the PSP is absent. I haven’t taken Math in a while but I think those percentages add up to 89, so I guess PSP/mobile phones takes home 11%.
PS3 and 360 Games Account for Nearly Half of Ubisoft’s Sales[Gaming Today]
Disney’s Answer To Mii: DGamer
DGamer is a social network service by Disney for the Nintendo DS, which comes with Achievements, Entitlements, and Honors. In addition to creating an extensive network, users can make little avatars that can most definitely look like them.
The feature comes first and foremost in “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” and Disney hopes to have Dgamer with every title they produce for the Nintendo DS soon enough.
Source: Disney
New Castlevania Game For The DS? Yes Please!
If you’re like me, you’re just itching for a new Castlevania game. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait too much longer. The ESRB site just updated their list with a new Castlevania game for the DS titled ‘Order of Ecclesia’. Not sure what it’s about but hopefully the focus will be on one character. Asking for Dracula to be the final boss is kinda like asking for syrup on your pancakes, you’re just wasting air. What If the console versions of Castlevania were also in 2-D?
New Castlevania title: there’s good and (potentially) bad news [DS Fanboy]
Gauntlet Coming To DS
Eidos is bringing old school gauntlet to the Nintendo DS. For those of too young to remember who are unfamiliar with gauntlet, it’s somewhat like Untold Legends, only with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer.
Features of Gauntlet on the Nintendo DS:
- Choose from Elf, Warrior, Wizard, and Valkyrie- Four-player Wi-Fi cooperative or competitive play
- Voiceover IP (VoIP)
- Three realms featuring 40 maps
- Ranked multiplayer in 3 game modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Treasure Hoard
Sounds just as good as when it first launched.
Eidos Brings ‘Revitalized’ Gauntlet To Nintendo DS [Gaming Bits]
Force Unleashing When?!
You all see this boxart? Yep…you won’t be seeing it until September 16th, 2008. I can’t help but be a bit saddened by this news seeing as how I’m a sucker for anything Star Wars and a chance to throw around helpless slags dressed in white. Not much more to say other than there is much to be excited about for the title itself, aside from the fancy shmancy boxarts for consoles. The game will be a 2nd runner up, with GTA IV taking the lead, to use NaturalMotion’s Endorphin engine with all of it’s elite stormtroopers and enemy A.I. On top of it, remember destruction? Sure, the environments themselves aren’t as destructable, but every object (doors, wood columns, statues, glass, etc) are all destructable. No, not the metallic columns that some people are hoping will dent when someone is thrown into them. Watch the videos. Everything feels real thanks to DMM or Digital Molecular Matter from LucasArts themselves. DMM is an engine that is the primary towards destructability for objects in dynamic and different ways.