Ur W33K 1N G33K (June 1 – 7)1

by A.J. Focht

Welcome to your extra long conference edition of Ur W33K 1N G33K!

X-Men: First Class is being widely hailed as the best super hero movie since The Dark Knight, and it ruled the box-office this weekend grossing $56 million. The prequel to the X-Men series may have beat out other current films on its opening weekend, but it doesn’t measure up to any of its predecessors, or in this case protégés. First Class had the smallest opening weekend audience of any of the X-Men movies. Despite all the critics praise, the film appears to have suffered from the sins of its…future, as the past two X-Men movies (X-Men: The Last Stand, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine) nearly destroyed all the credibility the series had built. Still, they’ve managed to win back many of their estranged fans and currently hold an audience rating of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.

On the other side of the comic coin, DC Comics has announced that its current storyline, Flashpoint, will be the end of the current DC Universe. DC will then launch an entirely new universe with 52 comics being renumbered at issue #1. On August 31, two comics will be released simultaneously, the final issue of Flashpoint and Justice League #1. The news didn’t stop there; DC announced the new universe will get a digital makeover as all of their new comics will also be released digitally. Digital copies will start at the same price as their paper counterparts, but after a month they will get a reduced online price.

One final big announcement in the comic world, Kevin Smith put out a casting call for a comic book-based reality TV show. Smith is reaching out to Tri-state comic geeks who are invited to audition to both be on the show and work at his comic shop, Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash. He later tweeted that AMC is the network interested in the show.

Now for the major news from the convention circuit: The E3 pre-event press conferences launched May 6 with Microsoft kicking things off. After starting with a live demonstration of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, several games were announced and previewed including: Tomb Raider, Mass Effect 3, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Ryse, Dance Central 2, and Fable: The Journey. It was also confirmed that Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary will launch on November 15, and that Halo 4 is in the works as the start of a brand new Halo trilogy featuring Master Chief.

As if regular gameplay wasn’t enough, Ice-T joined Cliffy Bleszinski on stage for a live Gears of War 3 campaign demo. For the most part the conference highlighted new uses and games for Kinect, including another Kinect Sports game, StarWars Kinect. Outside of the gameplay, several changes to Xbox Live were announced, an internal search engine powered by Bing and live TV support being the most noteworthy.

Sony started their press conference off by apologizing for all the recent outages to the PlayStation Network. They followed up with several live demos and trailers for games such as: Uncharted 3, Resistance 3, infamous 2, Starhawk, Dust 514, and BioShock Infinite (which they announced will come with the first Bioshock game on the same disk). Finally, Kaz Hirai came out and revealed what everyone had been waiting for, the NGP, now named PlayStation Vita. The PlayStation Vita has partnered with ATT for a 3G version that will run $299, compared to the standard WiFi version of $249. It’s slated for release this holiday season.

Finally, the Nintendo press conference was held May 7, marking the official start of E3. Shigeru Miyamoto began with the Legend of Zelda series, noting this year was its 25 year anniversary. To mark the milestone, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening will be made available as of now via the 3DS E-Shop. Miyamoto also reminded everyone that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D is released next week. As a gift to all the Zelda fans, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords will be given free during the month of September on DSiWare. Miyamoto finished by saying that The Legend of Zelda: The Skyward Sword will be released this holiday season.

Nintendo then previewed several games for the 3DS including: Mario Kart 3DS, Mario 3DS, Luigi’s Mansion 2, Star Fox 64 3D, and Kid Icarus: Uprising. Then the focus switched to Nintendo’s next gen Project Café, now revealed as Wii U. The Wii U’s primary new feature is a controller with a 6.2 inch screen that allows you to play your Wii games without a TV. Satoru Iwata explained the technology for Wii U is currently undeveloped and only after developers have more time with it will its true potential start to show. It will be backwards capable with Wii. The demos they showed failed to catch the audience or internet’s interest however, and it wasn’t until Iwata announced that a Super Smash Bros. on Wii U would be compatible with a 3DS counterpart that attention snapped back. The conference ended with Nintendo flaunting their new third party support for the Wii U with several games like: Assassin’s Creed: Revelation, Batman Arkham City, and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge.

Besides presentations from the console giants, several other developer press conferences were held. EA showed off The Sims Social, a new Sims game for Facebook, and Battlefield 3, which hits stores October 15. The Ubisoft junket started off by talking about their 25th anniversary, but quickly moved onto the good stuff. Along with the earlier Ghost Recon announcement, they revealed Ghost Recon Online, a free to play title whose beta is launching soon. They ended things with highly anticipated Assassins Creed: Revelation trailer and gameplay preview.

For full recaps on the press conferences check here: Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo.

Wrapping up the conference front, Apple has revealed details on iOS 5, iCloud, and OS X Lion. OS X Lion features many expected enhancements and iOS-like features. Among the updates are AirDrop, a peer-to-peer file sharing interface, and Versions, which will auto save copies of documents and allow you to revert back if need be. Meanwhile the big news with iOS 5 is that it’ll come with full Twitter integration. The system is also getting iMessage for all iOS users including those on iPad and iPod touch. The final and biggest announcement was about iCloud, something Apple is branding as a new “digital hub” that will store everything you need – photos, contacts, calendars, and mail, as well as purchases from iTunes, iBookstore, and the App store.

That’s it for our conference edition of Ur W33K 1N G33K. Check back next week for all the inevitable fallout.