at the end of the day E3 is a marketing exercise. its about hype. its about getting people excited for stuff. sometimes the stars align and you actually have some great games to show. sometimes you dont have anything to show so you bluff it (CG, announcements of far off games etc.). but if people are coming out of you conference and dont feel hyped then its not a good E3 performance.
numbers are pointless. i mean if you just want to talk numbers then the PC won....clearly. plenty of games from the MS, sony, ubisoft and EA conferences are all appearing on the PC. the Pc conference itself (which was a dam solid showing imho) also had a PC game or 2 to show. no other platform comes even remotely close in terms of numbers. but not many of those games have generated a huge amount of hype (though shadow of war has grabbed my attention out of nowhere). thats not to say they will be bad games. they could be brilliant (hopefully they are). hell a lot of the hyped games could be awful....if they even arrive. but E3 is about the hype.
MS didnt win. the X1X was a known quanitity. i dont think the price really helped (its not unreasonable but i suspect people were thinking within 50 of the PS4 pro). 4K and HDR are also a hard sell to a lot of people especially when trying to promote it over the internet to people watching on non 4K/HDR screens. they didnt both it or anything. we are not taking wiiu or PS3 levels of disaster here. but i dont think huge numbers of people are pumped for it. its pretty bad when new gaming hardware is announced and there isnt a huge amount of excitement.
sony were kinda in the same boat. nothing major. a lot of known quantities. we know how uncharted will play. we know how GOW will play. same with SOTC. spiderman looked good. spiderman AA with a bit more craziness is no bad thing. again it was fine. its just...not a lot of hype. not a lot of standing up in floods of tears over a FF7 remake. Monster hunter looks interesting but its a niche game with a very dedicated fanbase. sometimes announcements like that can be met with caution rather than hype. looks good though.
but a lot of noise is being made around they sheer craziness of mario odyssey, a very pleasant surprise of a metroid remake for the 3DS, MP4 (sometimes a logo is enough for a known IP to generate loads of hype), pokemon RPG coming to the switch (just a casual "by the way" is enough for that), mario xcom (everyone expected that to be complete rubbish but it won a lot of fans and the lead developer on that has gotten a lot of awws), BG&E2 (just CG, probably wont see it until the PS5 if it releases at all and there is no chance itll please the fans) and even far cry 5 had a good showing. its from ubisoft and nintendo that the noise is coming from after the show.
meanwhile sony are getting bogged down in a cross play argument. MS are getting bogged down in a lack of exclusives for the xbox argument. thats not hype.
now the only thing is that tis year could backfire on them down the road. next year you can bet everyone is going to ask "will we see BG&E2/MP4/pokemon on the switch?" and so on and if we dont then thats not going to be good for hype. it could leave their E3 presence very flat next year.
Log in to comment