This year Armageddon 2012 in Auckland has been larger this year, the stall holders have taken mostly of occupying space, there was more than last years, due to hindrance of the Rugby world cup in New Zealand which resulted less stall holders, also the Monday didn’t fall in the labour weekend, which meant that they didn’t bank on a trading day Monday.
This year the Armageddon calendar sync back to the pre Rugby world cup, which is good in the way, that there were more stalls, some accommodating more retail floor space than of last years. Mostly of the stalls generally occupy the Pavilion one, in which are dominating mostly gaming studios, Sony is one of the largest stall holders, then to the Microsoft Xbox, in down came to Blizzard, Acitivsion EA games, then to a few new entrants this year Alienware and Razor, orthough I’m surprise that they were on the other Pavilion. Among the other stalls are to off are comic stalls such as Gotham Comics, and behind the wall Hero for sale, with their guest comic artist in which you could get an autograph sign works or a custom drawn works from the artist. Just face to face of the Comic stall holders is the gaming Magic the gathering tournaments which held was held during the three day weekend, plus there was some spot prizes along the way, like booster game card packs.
Within the Pavilion one, there were a majority of game releases, such there was in the Xbox stall the release of Halo 4, which was jam pack like the interstate 405 during Carmeggeddon of people waiting to try out in turns with spot prizes in massive queues. And could say least for the Dishonour though, in saying Xbox could have set up an individual stall booth for Halo 4, and do replays of Machinima prime and 343 industries’s Halo Forward unto Dawn to promote the series, and the game play. With Xbox, there was also the Kinect gaming system also, with the Star wars game and sporting aspects, watching the Kinect stall, I wonder how Microsoft lost the opportunism of showing what the Kinect system can really do, and advertise in promoting the social, education, gaming also shopping nature of its ecosystem within those three days.
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Within the Acitivsion | Blizzard there was pretty much an emphasis on the MMORPG World of Warcraft, on the Mist of Pandaria also another MMO Diablo new release also Star Craft. Orthough I’ll be nice if they did an inductionary live stream session to get people into the game with some specials and a game store shop with game mechanise, instead of having EB games retailing it for them. Also the Call of Duty, I’m remarkably surprise also that giving its one of the most popular first person shooter games akin to Battlefield series. It had a smaller booth.
The Next stop with EA. EA’s booth is pretty interesting, the pretty much beefed up for this year. One thing their booth had almost the largest floor space yet, covering an internal gaming area, where you could do multiplayer gaming on medal of Honour, in a camouflage setting environment. Also with some Nerffing gun firing range happening to see how far you could Nerf. Alongside of the is the newly release of the Need for speed- most wanted. Also interesting that there wasn’t any promotion of Star Wars the old republic, due to the that there was other MMORPG’s promoted in the Acitivsion | Blizzard stand. Also in promotion Crysis three,
Apart from other stalls is the Sony, traditionally, demonstrating the newly PlayStation items, such as the newly Psvita, wonderbook, Also the promotionally it third person action adventure Gods of War game. As right next to the Sony stall a new comer to these years is Alienware promoting its extreme Hard core gaming machines to the first time introductionally used in the Con the Alienware’s Pod, it’s a sit in cockpit console with tri-wide screens, with a combination of gaming peripherals. The first time I’ve encountered the Alienware Pod is a many several months ago when they were launching Battlefield 3 globally in New Zealand, the Battlefield 3 New Zealand is amazing experience seeing how the game works, and seeing others awarded with spot prizes also lots cool swag. Among within the Alienware’s booth is the mini basketball court.
In opposition of the of the Xbox is the Nintendo stand covering almost the same area of the Activision | Blizzard stand covering most of the Wii U game consoles, and it portable Nintendo 3DS products in a nice white contemporary environment, in right adjunction to the Nintendo’s stall is Ubisoft’s stall where they were show casing some upcoming games such as Assassin’s Creed three, Farcry three, Zombi U, Just Dance four, Sonic All stars. Also within the same booth is the preview demonstration release of Crystal Dynamics| Square Enix’s Lara Croft’s Tomb Raider, in a seductive timing dosage of prescriptive game play, interesting also that there was least promotionally for the series of Tomb Raider as to the more of the hype to Xbox Halo four. Orthough Tomb raider is still one of my favourite single player games I still enjoy from taking restfully moments away from doing MMORPG on Star trek Online. I was hoping for more the same promotionally push they they’ve done for Comic Con San Diego 2012 with promotional footage from Zach Levi’s Nerd Machine.