Edinburgh Interactive Summary (Day 1)

Written by Connor Beaton, published 26th August 2010

I am not a morning person. I got up well in advance of my train, tried to drink my seriously under-sugared coffee, and headed to Leuchars station to meet my colleague, Ross, and catch our ride down to Edinburgh for the tenth annual Edinburgh Interactive Festival. I’d attended in 2008 as a member of the public and in 2009 as a member of the press, but this year was significantly different. For one, the line-up was much more impressive and the event was just in time for us to experience some of the most recent advances in the industry. The second reason was that I attended without a dedicated photographer; instead, our new assistant editor Ross tagged along, serving as photographer, co-interviewer and hat stand.

When the train pulled into Haymarket and we rushed to get off before the train made its way to its next stops, we briefly entertained the notion of going to Starbucks, since we were running ahead of schedule. Being a cheap bastard, I decided to grab a free coffee at the venue, the Edinburgh Filmhouse, instead. Good thing I made that decision, because I, the more experienced of our staff, led us in the completely wrong direction, making our way down Morrison Link until we ran out of pavement and were forced to double back, surely to the amusement of nearby on-lookers.

Once there and settled, we enjoyed the free drinks and lunch provided in the Filmhouse Cafe, grabbing as many ham and grain mustard sandwiches as possible and chasing them down with strawberry and cream scones. We hadn’t seen a single game yet, but we were definitely impressed with the generous buffet, and we all know that food comes only second to video games in terms of the best things ever made. Soon enough (and by that we mean one and a half hours later), everyone began to shuffle into the 280-seat cinema screen reserved for the conference and listened to Chris Deering’s introduction.

After listening to the conference for the next five hours or so and enjoying the best PowerPoint slide of all time, we made our way downstairs to talk to Jerry Johnson, the general manager of Xbox Live in Europe. The ensuing interview was interesting, and the man himself was a genuinely funny and interesting character. I’m still in the process of transcribing our interview, but you can read some of his comments about Halo: Reach already here. Shame he didn’t seem to want to elaborate on the subject.

Immediately afterwards, we headed down to the play area to mess about with Sony and Nintendo’s free games. I started with Samurai Warriors 3 in Nintendo’s tent, a button-bashing action game that was actually released on Wii back in May, but is only seeing a release in the United States this September. It was reasonably fun; I played with the Classic Controller Pro as one of the game’s female characters and logged a good ten minutes of gameplay before I left for my second interview, this time with Lima Sky’s Igor Pusenjak, who was interesting and talkative. Unfortunately, we didn’t chat in his venue of choice, the pub Shakespeare’s, since it was full, and made do with a little café with a completely incompetent woman working at the bar.

After our interview concluding, we headed back to the gaming area to play some of Sony’s new titles in their heavily branded truck. Gran Turismo 5, Start the Party, Sports Champions, MotorStorm: Apocalypse and Killzone 3 (click the names to read our hands-on!) were some of the titles we enjoyed the opportunity to play in the strictly no-photography truck, before briefly hanging out at the free networking drinks session and then heading home. How was the day? Freaking fantastic. Definitely the best Edinburgh Interactive we’ve had so far, and I had only seen the first day so far. Wonderful.

Check back tomorrow for more coverage, interviews with Margaret Robertson and David Ratcliff, and the second instalment of our Edinburgh Interactive summary!