Comic-Con: Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo announce lineups

Conventions: they're not all industry-only shindigs where friends of friends of people who work at videogame stores get to look at electronics-branded boobies! If you missed out on E3 last month, the con season is kicking off in earnest with Comic-Con later this week, and the big three have announced a multitude of previews and events intended to curry the precious favor of you, the moneyed public.

Microsoft's headline title for the Con is Gears of War 3, with the game's overhauled Horde 2.0 mode available for its first public hands-on demo. Director Cliff Bleszinski will join Rod Fergusson for a panel discussion of the games (6pm July 21), and novelist Karen Traviss will be discussing her work on the Gears and Halo novels as part of a panel discussion on the changing face of games writing (10am July 22). Microsoft's Frank O'Connor will be at this panel, as well as joining Traviss and her fellow novelist Greg Bear in a separate panel discussion of the Halo universe (11:30am July 22). Other games on show will include Kinect Sports: Season Two, Dance Central 2, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City, Rise of Nightmares, The Gunstringer and Age of Empires.

Nintendo will be showing that the original Wii still has plenty of life in it yet, with a lineup that reinforces the message that just because you haven't got a fancy tablet controller doesn't mean... oh, screw it, they're not showing the Wii U, there it is. The unspoken theme of Nintendo's Con lineup might be expressed as “The 3DS: It's Got Games Now!”, with Super Mario 3DS, Mario Kart 3DS, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Star Fox 64 3D, Ocarina of Time 3D and Pokedex 3D joining third-party titles such as Snake Eater 3D, Shinobi, Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition, Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D and Dead or Alive: Dimensions 3D. Shown on the Wii – to dispel the notion of the platform as a forgotten shoveling-ground for rhythm games and quickie licenses – will be Skyward Sword, Kirby Wii and Square Enix's Mario/Dragon Quest board game crossover,Fortune Street. Also, (ahem) Rhythm Heaven Captain America Just Dance 3 hey let's see what Sony have!

Sony's big push is the five-title lineup of Resistance 3, Starhawk, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Journey and the rebooted Twisted Metal. Titles will be playable in the Sony booth and panels include Exploring a 1950s Altered America with the Resistance team (5pm July 21), a Developing Interactive Entertainment focused on motion-capture, cinematic influences and Uncharted 3 (4pm July 22), David Jaffe's unveiling of a work-in-progress version of the opening cutscene for Twisted Metal (6pm July 23), and a discussion of the evolution of Warhawk into Starhawk (10am July 24). Clips of all events will be posted on the PlayStation Blog.

Comic-Con runs from July 21-24 at the San Diego Convention Center. Are you looking forward to it (whether or not you'll actually be attending)?

Jul 19, 2011