I'm at the Los Angeles Theatre (similarly gorgeous and historic with the Orpheum) waiting for the Ubisoft press conference to start; unlike the past two press conferences, Ubisoft don't even seem to have tried to set up wifi access for journalists. Whatever, I'm going to liveblog it anyway in this wordpad window, that'll show 'em.
4:58 pm - Apparently they're looking to start on time, after the total mess they made of registration (we were originally supposed to wait in a queue to get inside and get a badge, then go outside and wait in another queue to get back in.) Still, glad it'll be on time. Also, apparently Joel McHale is presenting this, which means it might manage to be funny and irreverent, and therefore worth the time.
5:01 pm - "The whitest host you'll ever see, Joel McHale."
He opens "Good evening, fellow nerds."
5:02 pm - "My gamertag is Seacrest_Slayer311."
5:05 pm - It is super weird to watch Joel McHale introduce the president of Ubisoft.
5:08 pm - talking about a new service, Uplay. It's designed very like the Xbox Dashboard.
5:10 pm - Ubisoft are to be working on Tintin. Makes perfect sense.
5:14 pm - I wonder if Joel McHale will come back on stage. Not that I have anything against the other presenters. I enjoy their... Frenchness.
5:16 pm - Ubisoft's Hybride division is to create over 100 shots for James Cameron's Avatar. This is interesting, because the assets they create are to be shared between the film and the game, and this technology is to be used to create "short movies" based in the Assassin's Creed 2 universe.
5:19 pm - James Cameron has just come on stage. He's so weird looking without a beard.
5:21 pm - He's basically talking us through the ideas behind Avatar. While he witters on, I'd like to note that the name card they gave me for this press conference mispells my name the way a French person would pronounce it - "Mattew". I found it amusing.
5:24 pm - Clearly he really loves this story, but feels like we could watch the whole film in the time it's taking for him to describe it.
5:30 pm - Wow, he's still talking. Is this on an autocue? I can't tell. Still, I'm getting a lot of time to admire the art here on the walls. The ceilign is particularly fascinating, with some faked perspective artwork that looks like it stretches off into a cloudy sky. It's a real shame that downtown LA is such a horrendous dump, with wonderful places like this here.
5:33 pm - Joel's back! He also just made a joke about Piranha 3-D and then said "There are so many French people back stage... I'm kind of scared."
And now he's introducing a Red Steel 2 trailer.
5:37 pm - "I played Red Steel 2 with Chris Brown recently and, uh..."
5:45 pm - Live demo of Red Steel 2 was pretty great (looks so much better than the original, with a really nice new asetetic) and it's apparently going to be bundled with the MotionPlus.
5:46 pm - Considering the main character is swinging around a samurai sword, however, it could do with being a bit more violent - there's no blood in it at all (and it feels like it should have No More Heroes-esque blood showers.)
5:47 pm - Carrot Top's Snowboarding sequel. Er, I mean Shaun White Snowboarding.
5:49 pm - WOW HOLY CRAP PELE JUST CAME ON STAGE
5:50 pm - To intoduce the new Ubisoft game Academy of Champions, apparently, where a bizzare looking version of Pele is the headmaster.
5:55 pm - Pele talked in Portuguese for a while about how he likes football and kids, and then Joel introduced a (pre-rendered) trailer for the game, one which has zero explanation of what kind of game it's going to be other than the setting is a bit like Harry Potter, except with footy instead of a stupid made up sport and Pele instead of some old wizard dude.
5:59 pm - "Pele was the only other guy back there not speaking French. I wonder how it felt for him to meet the poor man's Ryan Seacrest?"
6:00 pm - Guess they're going to show us more stuff about Splinter Cell Conviction now.
6:12 pm - The section was entirely a repeat of this morning's Xbox briefing, but man, Splinter Cell Conviction still looks awesome. Anyway, Joel is now introducing a trailer for Ruse.
6:15 pm - I don't get that trailer. It shows two dudes playing an amazing RTS on some kind of a multi-touch table. So, what, Ruse is a game for multi-touch gaming tables, or what?
6:17 pm - Oh no! A sales and marketing guy has come out! I sure hope he's not going to talk about statistics and stuff!
6:18 pm - He is! Talking about how Ubisoft's Imagine brand has made them the second biggest publisher on DS.
6:20 pm - A trailer for "tween games 2.0" - all of the stuff they're doing with the Imagine brand. I cannot imagine that anyone reading cares.
6:25 pm - Now he's talking about the fitness genre. How exciting! But they're introducing a new Wii fitness game, Your Shape, that will include a camera to analyse your shape and give real-time feedback. The trailer was a bit... naff though.
6:30 pm - Joel is back on, almost certainly to introduce the last title, which is clearly going to be a Rabbids title.
It is! Rabbids Go Home, apparently, which sounds a bit... Katamari-ish? The Rabbids are trying to collect enough stuff in a shopping cart to create a pild of stuff big enough to reach the moon.
6:38 pm - the live demo reveals it is, indeed, a bit Katamari-ish. I want this.
6:47 pm - Man, this press conference is loooooong. Beginning to fade a bit. But I'm back, because they've just announced they've got the North American publishing rights for No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. Hooray!
(Though there are no more details than that.)
6:48 pm - Oh, and they're also working on a project with Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment. How about that. The project is codenamed "Eden."
6:49 pm - We must be getting close to the end now, because they're going to talk about Assassin's Creed II.
6:50 pm - Or rather, show a trailer for it. I was wondering if they'd have learned lessons from the mistakes of the first game, but considering this trailer just showed our hero kill someone in a crowded party and then have to run from the guards like an idiot - as was the case with every "assassination" in the first game - I doubt it.
6:55 pm - Joel comes back to say goodnight, and that's all, folks!
Message Edited by JS on 07-26-2009 01:29 PM
buzzbishop
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