E3’s funniest and cringiest flops

Features

June 2, 2014

E3 2014 is just around the corner – 10-12 June 2014 to be precise – and as always, we expect it to be full of gaming announcements and perhaps some great hardware reveals.

But not every E3 goes down as well as the year before, sometimes they go terribly wrong – like laser-tag wrong.

These are some of the worst E3 flops in history.

Ubisoft’s childish Laser Tag demonstration

The lights began to flicker, the crowd thought the rapture was upon them, but it was just a bunch of crazy actors jumping around the auditorium pretend-shooting each like kids do in nursery school. At least the school kids are spared Joel McHale’s sarcastic barbs.

Ubisoft’s laser tag not only wins the most unwanted E3 demonstration award, but also the most awkward moment during E3 ever. I really feel sorry for that crowd.

Ninety-Nine Nights II

We’ve seen our own president Zuma struggling with his non-native language English, trying to deliver “extremely tough” speeches featuring big numbers that require great concentration, so we’re used to this sort of cringe and might be able to forgive Konami’s Tak Fujii for his shortcomings.

Fujii tried very hard to reveal Ninety-Nine Nights II with aplomb during the 2010 E3 press event, but I think he decided to light up a fatty before he got on stage.

“One Million Troops, One Million Troops, WOW”.

If only the perplexed crowd was as excited about this game as he was, it would have made a huge difference, but he basically forced them to clap about something that he thought was “extreme”, it was a bit sad.

Nintendo 2008 press conference

Nintendo decided that it was time to try something new, add in some hardcore game demos on stage, play some music, and over-react to everything whilst this is all taking place.

The 2008 Nintendo event was a disaster and made me near-suicidal while watching it. A terrible Shaun White Wii Balance Board demo, followed by Wii Music, and let’s not forget Reggie trying to sell us Wii Motion Plus.

Sony PlayStation 3 priced

If your memory of Sony’s shenanigans is rose-tinted thanks to the recently successful PS4 features and pricing reveal, let us not forget their previous attempt.

During ther 2006 press presentation Sony decided to drop the PS3 pricing bomb – it would retail for $499 for the 20GB model, and a whopping $599 for the 60GB model.

The pricing did not measure up well to the Xbox 360 which would have already been on the market for a year by the time the PS3 launched. The Xbox 360 “Core” with no HDD cost US$299, while the “Premium Xbox 360 with 20GB HDD cost US$399.

This did not go down well with PlayStation fans and is widely considered a blunder from the company, which it has apparently learnt from with its launch of the PS4.

PSP Go

The world was apparently not ready for a digital-download only PlayStation Portable, but Sony was going to give it to us anyway.

During the 2009 E3 press conference Sony revealed a disc-less PSP – the PSP Go would ditch the Universal Media Disc (UMD) format in favour of digital downloads. As exciting as it was at the time, when everyone learnt the facts and details about it they weren’t so happy.

The PSP Go would cost US$250 – only $50 less than its big brother the PS3 Slim. Add to this a lack of backward compatibility with PSP UMD games, a new proprietary connector, and a flawed controller re-design. Finally, considering that the perfectly capable PSP was much cheaper and without the flaws, and the PSP Go was wholly unattractive to most.