Comic Con 2007, San Diego, CA

For now check out pictures from the show:

Comic Con 2007 Pix - Day One

This is our second attendance to Comic-Con and once again, we're certainly impressed with the variety of entertainment it has to offer. We consider Comic Con the mini-E3, which we will discuss in fuller detail later on.

With the restructuring of the E3 Show, some video game developers have additionally set up booths at Comic Con and why not? Comic Con draws a larger crowd that E3 (at it's peak) ever did. E3 was created specifically (or at least it was their intention) for industry professionals, while Comic Con is for the whole industry, mainly the general public.

So what did we see this year? Some of the bigger players, Sony, Capcom, Konami Digital, Square Enix to name a few made their 'Mini E3' appearance.

For those curious to why SNK has not made an appearance to Comic Con the last reasoning we got from them is that they intend to, but the issue is limited floor space. In other words, in order for SNK to get in, someone has to cancel because previous exhibitors has priority year in and year out. Once someone drops out, the next one in line gets a shot. From what we heard, getting into the main floor could take years and from what we saw this year, it seems that way.

So let's get to the good stuff. What did we see?

CAPCOM

With E3 out of the 'big' picture, huge announcements from them won't happen in the states. Expect the top secret announcements to happen at the Tokyo Game Show for home systems and at the AOU Show (in February) for the arcade sector.

Capcom though did not leave fans empty handed at Comic Con. They've been hard at work, rehashing games such as Super Puzzle Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II Turbo for the HD market. With HD resolution and aspect ratio (16:9), the old school Capcom classics never looked better than before. With Street Fighter II HD, Capcom seeked the assistance of the comic production company, Udon to redraw all the sprites for this 'new' release, so they've not only diversified themselves with 3-D gamers, but also are feeding it's loyal fighting game fans.

One of the pleasantly surprising title that we saw was Rocketmen. This title resembles Smash TV, with Spike Cannon graphics and gameplay. At first, you're confined in an arena similar to Smash TV and later, once you've cleared the static stage, you move on to other locations, collecting different weapons and powerups, similar to both titles mentioned above. The dynamic stage movement keeps the gamer's interest from stage to stage, whereas Smash TV could get a bit old after a few stages. This title will be available through subscription service for both Xbox Live and the Playstation Network.

Yes, we have Resident Evil footage for the Wii and Devil May Cry 4 footage for the PS3. These will be uploaded in the next few days once the files are converted. Both games look spectacular...as we would expect from Capcom. More to come.

Konami

We're 2-D fans and the other great 2-D manufacturer is Konami. Some of you readers may be too young to remember the Konami classics, such as Axelay, but most of you have played or heard of Contra and Castlevania. Yup, Konami is bringing back some goodies, Contra 4 for the Nintendo DS and Dracula X for the Sony PSP.

Contra 4 is a reformulated Contra (the original) and Super Contra. That's fine by us as we consider those as some of the best of the series. One thing we couldn't remember that we were reminded of at the show is how hard the original Contra was. Yeah, this game is difficult.

Dracula X is a rehash of the original, with redrawn 3-D backgrounds on a 2-D play field. Konami has retained the mood and feel of the Castlevania series in this PSP port/version. The background is nicely drawn and the whole game plays like all the great 2-D classics. The PSP certainly needs all the help it can get and it's nice to Konami is helping out with Dracula X.

This article will be updated as we gather more news...and sleep. We also captured some videos from Capcom, Konami and even Jessica Alba!! in her recent comedic role (we're so tired, we can't remember the name of the movie). All of these will be uploaded soon, so check back.

Final Notes

The video game market as a whole has changed quite a bit in the past 2 decades. We've seen various financial cycles for both the arcade and home market and the past two years have shown just how volatile the gaming market really is.

To briefly go over the radical changes, we've seen the arcade market's demise due to the surge in home systems mainly from the hands of Sony and Nintendo throughout the mid '90's to the current time. To be specific, there really is no arcade market left in the United States, at least. What's really keeping these 'Family Fun' centers afloat isn't arcade games, but more of redemption and vending machines, which accounts for 80-90% of their revenue. Arcade games has taken a secondary roles as their complementary income.

With this being said, we'd expect the home console market to be all peachy right? Well, up to the PS2, things looked pretty good for all the players, but with the current generation of home systems, Sony has dug a hole for everyone, especially those groups that organize the shows such as E3.

Sony entered the Nintendo dominant home console market with a great game plan. Build a powerful system that was easy to program for, which means that game producer could make games inexpensively. In the end, this leaves more potential for profit. Sony has gradually swayed away from it's original thought process, forcing programmers to relearn new tools and techniques with it's PS2 and now the PS3. So how does this affect the rest of the market?

From what video game manufacturers are claiming, developing a PS3 game costs no less than 5 million USD. On average, development and marketing costs for each title easily exceed 10 million and some going over 20 million. This these outrageous numbers, each title developed must be a hit, otherwise, string a few bad titles together and they could be down $30 to $50 million. A number that a baller such as Sony could absorb, but certainly not smaller developers, such as SNK.

This affects the smaller developers overall annual budget on various, expenses, one of them being able to display their booth at conventions. Recently, the largest video game show, E3 was forced to downsize to a much smaller venue because of this domino effect, where the smaller developers could no longer absorb the high costs of floor space and development costs.

At least in the United States, some developers may choose Comic-Con as the E3 replacement. This show could work for them in the long run, as the overall exhibit expense for this year is significantly less compared to what E3 would charge. The one major drawback at this point is floor space as it seems Comic-Con has use every single inch that the San Diego Convention Center offers. Other possible scenarios is to partner up with some local hotels nearby and use their ballrooms as additional floor space, similar to the layout that CES (Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas) uses.

Oh well, for now, we'll take what we can get and so far, we like what we see.