First, two necessary disclaimers:
- It's noteworthy that I neglected to write about E3 here last year, so my most recent E3 post was from 2013. 2012-2014 proved to be an uncomfortable phase in life. Add to that my lack of interest in what was going on in gaming at the time. I'm happy to report that that's all changed and I was able to bring my characteristic interest, passion and predictions back for this year. More about this soon, but a big part of it was...
- I'm now an employee of Sony working on the PlayStation Store, so I'm obliged to start with the comment that these opinions are my personal ones and not those of Sony the company. There's no secret/unreleased info here, and while it would be easy to call me biased, I plan to continue to call 'em as I see 'em. More after the run-down.
- Bonus third disclaimer: I'm very late! This was a lot to work through. Sorry about that.
1. The manufacturer and publisher pressers still rule the day.
These events are still by far the most efficient in terms of the game info delivery per unit of time ratio.
There are a lot of red herrings, which I'll condense to a rule of thumb: what causes cheers and applause may not sell, and what sells may not cause cheers and applause.
That said, I think we all like to take the overall temperature of a manufacturer/publisher by their overall quality and breadth of games shown, as well as the tenor of the event. (Also, it is still encouraged to get on the hype train for games you think you'll love.)
I'll take the manufacturers in chronological order:
Nintendo comes first, because I think their Nintendo World Championships event should count as their presser. The fanboys were assembled in the theater, there was a great show put on by all involved, and the appearances by Miyamoto-san and Reggie lit the place up.
New IP and upcoming releases not only showed up, but they showed up in really interesting and creative ways. A new mecha-football game on 3DS was newly announced and a competition title at the same time. Super Mario Maker's use in the tournament shows its creative potential (and humor potential). A DLC announcement for Smash 4 was greatly performed, too.
Their true presser, a YouTube presentation, showed a relatively weak hand. New Zelda on 3DS appears to be the highlight. The new Star Fox finally showed up, and it is indeed Star Fox. I'll buy it and enjoy it. Seeing none of the new flagship Zelda for Wii U was a disappointment, but on the other hand after that game the Wii U console may well be a lame duck.
But Nintendo will be fine. More on them later.
Microsoft comes next, and they ... didn't seem to change much. I should lead with their strong suit: HoloLens may just be magical. The Minecraft demo looked really, really fantastic.
Unfortunately, MS has a history of polished tech demos that don't live up to the magic. In 2010 I was pulled in by the magic of Kinect and the potential of Dance Central. It didn't work fantastically in actual living rooms, and the hardware was optional, so it sank. Two Ars Technica reports (here's the latest) lament a "startlingly small field of view" on HoloLens prototype devices.
There was some stuff that one would think couldn't go wrong (but did). Oddly, MS led off with announcing backwards compatibility with the 360. This is a feature that only matters at launch, when the library is lacking and the previous generation is still going strong. 2 years in, the One and the PS4 are both mainstream consoles producing great games. Combine that with some weirdly couched language about discs and permissions and downloading, and one gets the impression that it's limited-release emulation, closer to Nintendo's Virtual Console than across the board back-compat. That's going to irritate gamers when the feature doesn't work for their game of choice.
The Elite Controller looks great, I bet it feels great, and it's customizable... but it's retailing for $150? What? eSports types might spring for it, but that is a small audience.
Aside from that, their game content seemed hamstrung by a smaller first-party portfolio compared to Nintendo or Sony. The only memorable presentations were Halo 5 and Gears 4. And those were honestly lacking impressiveness.
In my experience, the Gears presentation wasn't visible. Everything was too dark. To Tycho at Penny Arcade, who has opinions on the franchise, it was less impressive for other reasons:
The demo of Gears of War 4 was, in my opinion, the only off note in the Microsoft press thing. That’s not an indicator of a bad product or anything like that, there’s no way to know. I’m saying that was a bad part to show and the whole thing just needs to bake. Gears is, like Warmachine or Doctor Who, one of my things. This means that I extend it some sympathy, because it does something uncommon, something I can’t get elsewhere. Even then, with an optimal audience, I couldn’t find much to hold onto.
MS got to include some third-party and multiplatform stuff, like Square Enix's rebooted Tomb Raider and Ubisoft's The Division. The association with the Tomb Raider demo came off to me as MS trying to respond to the Uncharted franchise over in Sony's house, which is a system-seller unlike Tomb Raider. (That's a give-and-take thing: MS caught up and won in racing sims. Halo is still better than Killzone.) But the game is ultimately multiplatform and credit is due to Square Enix for making such an impressive-looking demo.
MS needs to get called out for the only presser out of about 10 that was laden with buzzwords like "innovation," "scale" and "epic." They might have missed the memo about getting the core audience back with an E3 showing.
Sony did much the same thing they did two years ago as well: respond with more games. Sony easily had a higher games-per-second ratio than the other guys.
But man oh man, did they play the announcement card well. (Yes, "they" - I'm in a separate subsidiary from Sony Computer Entertainment, oddly enough, and it's not like I was on the team that put this together anyway.) Starting the whole thing with The Last Guardian - a game assumed long gone - shook the audience awake. Later on they brought up Yu Suzuki to plug a Kickstarter campaign for Shenmue III - a game that was known to be long gone.
And then...
If The Last Guardian and Shenmue III were gaming treasures thought lost, then remaking Final Fantasy VII on the new generation of consoles is like the Holy Grail. (Full disclosure: it's multiplatform.) And the modern Japanese part of Square Enix can always find new ways to disappoint its fans (see: Final Fantasy after X; iPhone releases). But Sony's purchase of the timed exclusive means it gets announced by Sony and all the minds are blown in Sony's conference.
If we still play the "Who won E3?" game based on the aforementioned temperature-taking, Sony won this year handily.
2. Once and for all, here's the rule for PC gaming vs console gaming ups and downs.
A long, long time ago there was a column written by some gaming blogger that suggested that the best gaming to be had can be had on PC or on console, depending on the season.
What it really comes down to is console lifecycles. If the console is in its peak of lifecycle (2-5 years in), that platform will have the best gaming experience possible. If you're at the end of a cycle and the start of a new one, the PC will have the best experience.
That blogger was right, and it's surprising that the rest of the world hasn't caught on to that.
PC is great for innovating gameplay ideas in indie development, business models, faster hardware, and now we're seeing that PC got to VR and AR first. The console will incorporate PC's ideas, polish them, and make them more available to all, but it'll have to wait until the next lifecycle to accomplish most of that.
So while it's cute that there was a "PC Gaming Day" with Day[9] hosting and a theater full of PC gaming fans, right now it's the console's turn to shine. The PC will continue to quietly develop new ideas and practices, and I bet in another 5 years the PC Gaming Day will be where it's at.
3. VR (and AR) is coming, but not yet.
The demos just all sound too rough around the edges. An internal Sony writeup from "our guy on the floor" stated as much, and he didn't spare Sony's own Morpheus tech from that review.
4. Shooters are back. Thank goodness.
For several years, the only shooter game in town was Call of Duty, and we really needed to be saved from that series jumping the shark. While its presence at E3 is still massive (its sales justify that), shooters got a lot of love in the form of Destiny, The Division, Rainbow Six, Dishonored 2, Fallout 4, Doom, Deus Ex, Gears of War, Halo 5, Just Cause 3, and Ghost Recon among still more.
Shooters birthed PC gaming, online multiplayer, put Microsoft on the map, helped Activision stock reach great heights... I really can't imagine why they went away to begin with. But as someone who grew up with those series and their predecessors, I have to say I'm incredibly stoked for the next couple years.
5. Toy figurines are the new cash cow. Nintendo is saved.
For all the dithering we talk about when we talk about Nintendo and their content library on a system that isn't selling like gangbusters, the amiibo figurines are keeping the profits rolling in. This cash will more than suffice to keep them working on their next hardware.
6. We finally have meaningful facial expressions.
Tomb Raider and Uncharted both showed wonderful subtlety in facial expressions. We used to only have the power for very exaggerated facial gestures like a raised eyebrow (Uncharted's Drake used that for just about every sly unsurprised one-liner in the franchise).
Grand Theft Auto, often the bar for quality in game production, only showed anger from its character animation.
Compare that to voice acting. It's been good in AAA games for over a decade.
Those two games demoed this year signaled that visual acting will be a thing. That means digital actors, which in turn means we can take advantage of the subtlety of good Hollywood actors. The potential is there technically, but what about financially?
Games to watch!
-Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: After the recent DX game rebooted the franchise successfully, Eidos has no qualms about boasting the legacy of the older games. Personally, I'm super excited to see Eidos Montreal get another crack at this great IP after they constructed such a great world last time and improved upon their design mistakes with the Director's Cut.
-Tomb Raider: Visually very strong, with a heavy Uncharted influence. Looks very promising.
-Metal Gear Solid V: We already got a taste in the form of Ground Zeroes, but the finished product looks like it has potential to be gorgeous, deep, and oddly humorous in that most Kojima-ish of ways. Here's the 40-minute gameplay demo, if that's your thing. The game releases soon. It'll probably be a masterpiece.
-Super Mario Maker: Seriously, we've all wanted this for so long. I'm expecting some great stuff to surface.
-Star Fox Zero: New Star Fox! It looks like it's carrying on the tradition. We've had to wait long enough.
-Wattam - the new one from Katamari Damacy designer Keita Takahashi. This one appeared in very brief teaser form previously, but according to Warren Spector, it surprised and delighted him. Quoth Mr. Spector:
(Frankly, I worry that it’s so different, it might run into some commercial difficulties, but let’s hope for the best.) Wattam is a wonder. Soulful in a medium that’s often soulless… a work of childlike wonder… a real sense of discovery… and often laugh-out-loud funny. I just hope people get it. I’m not even going to describe the graphics or gameplay. I don’t have the words. Just trust me on this one…
I haven't seen any of the game in person myself but I definitely trust his judgment and I'll always keep an eye on anything Keita Takahashi does.
And there we have it! Took quite a while to think through and write, but this year had a great E3 for games overall and for me personally.
Next year: Will I finally get to see E3 in person?