Winner: Sony - According to a site with more credentials than even I can dream of, Sony inexplicably won E3 through some sort of magic and subterfuge nobody outside of Jane Wells' domicile were subjected to.
Then he watched the Sony press conference, and the world as we know it changed. After hearing about Metal Gear Solid 4, as well as other PlayStation exclusives in the pipeline and the awesomeness of Blu-ray, he promptly packed up his Xbox 360 and all his games and went down to Game Stop to trade them in. He bought a PS3 and Metal Gear Solid 4.
While I have no doubt that a 16 year old could have such a snap judgment, it's my bitter cynicism from the many years on the Internet that makes me skeptical. The “sold my console for another one, for a single game!” bit has been fanboy troll fodder for years, and is almost always effective. From the ubiquitous “sell your GameCube, it's all over” meme from '03-'04 to my own “I sold my GameCube for an Xbox for Halo 2” and “Wal-Mart stopped carrying Xbox stuff” skits way back in the day, it's a tactic that's ridiculously easy with immediate and huge results.
One has to wonder about the legitimacy of the article, but it's ultimately lower than a footnote in the year's news stories.
Loser: Ubisoft - Already somewhat controversial for their previous relations with the farcically awful copy-protection scheme called StarForce, Ubisoft has somehow outdone themselves by providing users with a pirated no-CD crack program to fix an error in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2's copy protection scheme.
Users that purchased “Direct2Drive” versions of the game from IGN's eponymous service were unable to install a new patch for the game. The patch in question, 1.03, had much to do with anti-cheating measures and online play. Given that “Direct2Drive” versions of games use re-written code such as to use only IGN's copy protection scheme, traditional patches usually do not work—and therefore have to be remade for the different versions of the game.
In this case, a representative of Ubisoft pushed forth a fix for the problem that was hosted on Ubisoft's own servers. It was quickly redacted, but said fix turned out to be a hacked file released by a pirate group.
Stealing a game is one thing, but having a game company steal your method for stealing their game and push it to legitimate consumers is another, far more failure-filled situation. Good thing Ubisoft can't be sued in this situation, eh?
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