E3 is a mere week away, or at least the start of the various conferences, it?s time to start guessing what wonders we will hopefully see. By "guessing", I actually mean confirming what has already been confirmed and then wildly speculating! Here's a small selection:
Software
Sony have already announced God of War: Ascension and The Last of Us, which will no doubt have playable demos at their conference, but also look out for PlayStation All Stars: Battle Royale, LittleBigPlanet Karting, Dust 514, Sly Cooper Thieves in Time, and possibly new games from Media Molecule, Sucker Punch, Cambridge Studio, Evolution Studios and Guerrilla Games for a variety of PS3 and Vita games.
EA will as usual have their big FPS, Medal of Honor: Warfighter and Battlefield 3 DLC, a new Need for Speed game from Criterion, Dead Space 3, FIFA 13 and a bunch of EA Partners titles including the generic looking Overstrike, Crysis 3 and something Rock Band related.
Borderlands 2 is a game I'm excited for after the excellent job of Borderlands.
Activision will show Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, 007 Legends, Tony Hawk?s Pro Skater HD, all of which sounds pretty dull.
Halo 4 will be big for Microsoft, as will Forza Horizon and Fable The Journey, and they?ll probably pimp Kinect even more than last year.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance will have the first playable build of the game on show to the public, so expect lots of previews and media coverage, and hopefully a confirmed release date. It's also Metal Gear's 25th Anniversary this year, so hopefully Kojima Productions will announce either a Metal Gear Solid HD remake, or the next chapter in the series Metal Gear Solid 5. Also look out for Castlevania: Lords of Shadows 2 and Mirror of Fate. Konami are also holding a pre E3 conference again on Friday 1st June 8am UK Time.
Ubisoft's conference will be very similar to last years, just with updated games, so look out for Assassin's Creed III, Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 and Far Cry 3. Hopefully the new Rayman and Splinter Cell games will bring some more excitement.
Square Enix will have the recently delayed Tomb Raider, hopefully with some gameplay, Sleeping Dogs, some Final Fantasy game and Hitman Absolution.
Namco will have Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Tekken X Street Fighter and some Dark Souls PC stuff.
Capcom will have Devil May Cry, Lost Planet 3 and Resident Evil 6.
Sega will have Aliens Colonial Marines and probably some sort of Sonic game.
Value seem to be missing E3 this year, but they've said this sort of thing before with surprise results, most notable being Gabe Newell turning up Sony's stage at E3 2010 to announce Portal 2 for PS3. Like many others, I would love some sort of Half-Life 3 announcement.
Hardware
We?ve known they'll be full blown coverage of the Wii U from Nintendo, which will have to impress many, especially the hardcore fans with details of the power of the console and it's online features.
Most of the speculation at the moment is on whether Sony and Microsoft will reveal anything of their next consoles. Everyone seems to think there is little to no chance of new consoles, but given the constant Q4 2013 rumours going around for the 720, I?d be surprised/disappointed if nothing was mentioned. This is also the rumoured Steam box/cube/thing, but I can?t see that happening, and possibly something from Apple, but Apple likes to do things by themselves, so don?t expect them to turn up.
Epic games will be showing off Unreal Engine 4, which give us a glimpse into the future of any new hardware, hopefully with less of the problems that has plagued Unreal Engine 3.
Anyway, that's enough of my ramblings.