As I wandered Santa Monica in my E3 daze, a little sick and smog-caked birdie landed on my shoulder and whispered, "Dave, the age of the Mega-hit is over," and fluttered away.
Well, okay, no - there was no bird. And although I am feeling dazed and I do believe that, based on what I'm seeing here, we're slipping into the post Mega-zoic Epoch of this vidgame industry. A game doesn't have to be a monster (huge budget, giant dev teams) to be truly killer.
Of course the industry is going to make gobs of money with the titles their showing here - GTAIV, Madden 08, Halo 3, etc. But I think (hope) that the innovations I'm seeing here in interface and digital distribution are ushering in a new era.
The most exciting stuff out here falls into those two categories - from new ways to play with your Wii, to the virtual world of the PS3's Home and Microsoft's burgeoning Xbox Live Arcade and Marketplace. On the PC side, Kudos also go to Valve Software, which is showing The Orange Box - a downloadable episode of its hit Half-Life 2 franchise.
Keywords: Episodic. Downloadable. Social networks. Mods. Intuitive gameplay. Hmm....are consoles turning into PCs?
