Hardcore Gamers' Reaction to Sony's E3 Conference: An Empirical Study Concludes

Andrewh
Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Editor's note: The penultimate article in Andrew's E3 2009 press conference series is here, with the real-time reactions to Sony's presentation. Stay tuned for the final installment, a comparative analysis of all three major press events. -Demian


 

Hardcore Gamers' Reaction to Sony's E3 Conference
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Abstract: The third and final press conference was witnessed, and commented upon, by neogaf.com members with aplomb. This particular thread provided extra obstacles to compiling data, due to the presentation style and the conference's position in the schedule.

Methodology: Please see the methodology found in the analysis of Nintendo's E3 press conference. For additonal results, please see the analysis of Microsoft's E3 analysis.

Additional Difficulties Encountered: This particular thread presented additional obstacles to data collection not found in the prior threads. First, and foremost, this thread was the final major press conference, and many of the comments referenced material in other conferences. Perhaps related to this, many more "conversations" were held within the thread, and to ascertain whether a particular comment was positive, negative, or unrelated, I had to refer back to the original comment (often quoted), which in turn referred to another comment.

 

Also, due to long montages featuring many games, quick transitions, and game info inserted into throwaway comments, many commenters were reacting to a variety of products all at once.

Finally, there seemed to be more of a lag between different feeds, as many commenters were referring to the same announcements over a couple minutes. No "calibration" was made to reflect this, as figuring it out would have been impossible.

Conclusions: This thread offered a variety of insights into the hardcore gamers' reaction to the press conference in ways that were both expected and surprising.

First, Jack Tretton, unlike previous executives appearing in E3's 2009 press conferences, managed to sustain positive comments. This is likely due to his candid humor concerning pre-conference leaks.

As expected, sales data, long speech segments, the PS2 and PSP received cool receptions. PSP Go!, while leaked, did received positive feedback, but this quickly turned sour with the introduction of SensMe and the $249.99 price point.

For a known quantity, Uncharted 2 had a surprising positive reaction, while the first gameplay demo of MAG had a surprisingly negative reaction.

PSP games such as Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and Resident Evil all had somewhat negative to somewhat positive responses. Positive responses declined as the games were described, while they improved once trailers were shown.

Home received a predominantly negative response, as well as the PS3 montage that followed (many citing the lack of full-screen video as the cause of their disappointment).

Rockstar's Agent received an excited response once announced, which quickly cooled after a lack of any footage/info.

Final Fantasy 13 got a cool response as well, due to its larger presence in the Microsoft conference.

The highlight of the conference was the announcement of Final Fantasy 14, outdoing any other announcement in any other press conference (narrowly besting Crackdown 2 with two more positive comments/minute). It should be noted that this quickly turned negative once it was revealed that the game was an MMO. Many of the commenters that contributed positive feedback initially returned and expressed negative feedback in the following 2-4 minutes.

Motion Control initially did poorly, but as time went on, opinions became mixed, much like the Microsoft announcement of Project Natal. This mixed reaction continued with the announcement of Mod Nation Racers.

The Last Guardian spiked positive, then quickly went negative due to the similarity between the trailer presented and a previously-leaked trailer. This went positive again once many commenters realized that it was indeed an updated trailer.

Finally, Gran Turismo 5 and God of War 3 got positive reactions that one would expect from anticipated, but already announced, titles.

Now that all studies are completed, please stay tuned for a recap and comparative analysis.

 
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Comments (1)
Default_picture
June 10, 2009
Perhaps the problem with [i]MAG[/i] is that, at least to me, it seems like [i]Battlefield[/i] with more players. More players does not equal more fun, and looking at a gameplay demonstration from one point of view is certainly not going to change that train of thought.

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