E3 2007: Midway and Activision Press Conference Wrap-Up

Time for the news from Activision and Midway. Instead of covering the Midway press event Ron will have a hands on piece coming later today so I’ll instead focus on Activision. The one key element of Activision’s press conference was the celebrities involved. Jaimie Kennedy served as the emcee while Slash talked up Guitar Hero III, Tony Hawk popped in to talk about the latest in his game series and Stan Lee waved from the crowd but didn’t actually participate.

The actual news value of the press conference was lacking at best. The trailers were retreads from other events, the message felt empty and unexciting from all facets. The energy of the event was missing completely. This year E3 is hard to get excited about when the publishers can’t even muster up excitement for their own titles.  This hasn’t been an issue with the developers – they still continue to march and plug away and are legitimately excited but so far the big publishers seem asleep at the wheel. Its obvious to me that no one likes the new format much but it really shows in the big publisher presentations.