Hardware

Live: EA press conference

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Oops! That’s all. We’ll set up a gallery with the shots in a second.
New game is called Rage and it’s a combination “Action, exploration and driving” game, says John Carmack.
Devin taking over.
EA has teamed with id Software.
4:19 Left 4 Dead shipping…on PC and Xbox 360.

Gameplay is different every time. “Director” dynamically changes atmosphere and gameplay. Devin will check this out tomorrow.

Valve is up. Left 4 Dead splash screen. Co-op, first person horror game. Experience a scary action movie with your friends. Dynamic shared narrative achieved with procedurarlly generated character performance. 1-4 players.

Not much revealed in the trailer.
PC first, console second.
4:11PM Bioware! Dragon Age: Origins. My battery might die soon.

Need for Speed, Tiger Woods and Monopoly coming soon.
Scrabble will be upgraded in the coming weeks to play against friends over Wi-Fi.
Using the accelerometer. Ya, ya.
4:08PM Talking about the iPhone as a platform for gaming. App store has Tetris, Sudoku and Scrabble from EA. We wrote about that last week.
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Challenge you friends based on challenges you’ve just completed that your friend might not have unlocked. Social networking for gamers. Yay!
4:06 Shawn Fanning from Rupture is now on stage.

EA Nucleus helps pull all of your online gaming together. Even connecting your mobile profile with your console profiles. Nucleus will be in 25 titles by 2009.
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EA is serious about the Wii.

Peter Moore just pwnd Natalie. He birdied and she’s putting for par. Bloops. Bogey.

3:57PM Demo of Tiger Woods 09 All Play being played by Peter Moore.

LPGA pro Natalie Gulbis is on stage.

New line of sports games coming. Talking about All Play, which I covered a couple weeks back. The FIFA Soccer 09 ALL PLAY title still lacks a cover model.

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Hot zones break down the court so you know where a player’s hot spots are.

Live demo between Lakers and Celtics. Bill Walton is commentating. Ripping on the Lakers.
Player tendencies, like driving down the lane right or left. Tony Parker demo likes to go left. But that can change as the season goes on. Player DNA breaks down player preferences. Team DNA: how players play together. Talking about Kevin Garnett’s move to the Celtics and how that trade affected

Dynamic DNA (real world analytics used by NBA teams) brings in fresh data every day for teams and players for NBA LIVE 09. It will update every single day.

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Bill Walton! BiG RED!!! He helped my home town Blazers win a championship. FYI.
Talking about Madden and NBA Live. Boring.
3:43PM Peter Moore is now on stage.
Coming September 7, 2008.
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Spore creatures can now mate.
Spore have teamed up with SETI Institute.
Robots or humans were never demoed but fans have used the existing parts to create them. Planes, boats, helicopters and other random stuff have been created.
What the heck is Spore? Heh. 100K creatures were created in 22 hours and 1 million were done in about a week.
Spore Creature Creator is at the top of the charts at the end of June.
3:32PM Will Wright from Spore on the stage.
This game looks amazing. Crowd clapping after trailer.

Mirror’s Edge demo. Once it’s over you can see the full demo from the beginning.

3:25PM: Dice is creating Mirror’s Edge. Demo on PS3 being shown.
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Game is coming to Xbox 360 and PS3 on October 21, 2008.
Laser targeting is spread out with three points of contact.
I think I just wet myself. Holy crap. This thing is scary.
You’ll have to tear the zombies apart limb from limb. There’s a really cool HUD system. Life meter is on your back, like a backpack.
3:17PM Dead Space is being talked about now.
Do people still play Sims?
Sims 3 trailer being shown.
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3:15PM Network here at the Orpheum is going in and out. Pics coming soon.
3:15PM Sims 2 Store Beta coming. Download the entire game digitally. Sims 3 coming in January.
3:13PM Coming in January 2009. Don’t worry. Pics are coming.
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3:12PM SimAnimals demo. a hand just lifted up a bear. The bear is now chasing a squirell. Weird. WTF?!
3:11PM New Sims game. SimAnimals!
3:10PM No hype. They’re going to have the creators who built the games speak instead of stupid number like Microsoft did earlier today.
3:09PM John Ricitiello is on the stage.
3:07PM Looks like casual gaming will be talked about a lot today.
3:06PM Here we go.
3:03PM Still waiting. They’re telling us to “turn off our PDAs and cell phones.” Yeah right.
2:47PM Devin and I are seated. Starting in about 13 minutes.

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