E3 2012 Rundown

So a couple of weeks ago the yearly E3 conference in San Diego happen which was unfortunately being dubbed the convention that ‘nobody wanted to happen’. Rumours around the show floor claimed Microsoft had been planning to announce its next-generation Xbox until a couple of months ago but decided to pull out and Sony gratefully followed. Unfortunately this left almost everyone slightly less interested in the event as people had been expecting some big news on the future of gaming.

Microsoft kicked off the event in what appeared to be a bit of a lacklustre conference which is no doubt quite understandable as they would have been preparing to use most of their time talking about the new Xbox.  There were however a few big named games on show though, including Halo 4, Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Gears Of War: Judgment. Unfortunately though these were all sequels or prequels to readily established series so disappointingly there were no major surprises.

Microsoft’s biggest stakes this year listed off their new hardware functions in the form of Xbox SmartGlass – their new cloud content sharing technology. They also unveiled Xbox Music, which didn’t appear to do anything revolutionary whatsoever.

Electronic Arts’ then took to the stage, they opened with confirmation of Dead Space 3 which features drop-in, drop-out co-op that still holds the dark and claustrophobic feel of the last two outings. They then went through the new offering from the Need For Speed franchise in the form of Most Wanted which seems to feel more like Burnout every time I see it.

Ubisoft then offered an hour of awkward scantily clan women and fluorescent colours – typical French – but their actual offerings probably saved the first day of the show if not the whole conference itself. Their stunning Watch Dogs demo promised something truly unique with an open world environment focusing on the big brother effect. They also gave us more details on their FPS ZombiU.

Sony then followed with their yearly conference that once again showed off overlong gameplay demos and much like Microsoft a disappointing lack of anything we really wanted to see. In fact the strangest absence apart from their new console was the low amount of Vita news. Their one redeeming point was that the games they did show had some great graphics and some of the best scenes we got to see.

Sony continued by introducing their new favourite partner in the form of Quantic Dream and their new Beyond demo starring Ellen Page (that girl from Juno). Disappointingly this did not show off any of the gameplay we expected but showed off a beautiful game none the less. This drifted quickly into a gameplay demo of The Last Of Us which makes this seem even more like a Uncharted style action adventure – while it looks lovely I’m still not seeing any originality from it.

Sony the pushed their clever Wonderbook concept on us which showed JK Rowling’s Book of Spells which is obviously heavily linked to her world of Harry Potter.

All in all Monday went OK but nothing really grabbed my attention for too long expect for Ubisoft’s fantastic looking Watch Dogs which I’m sure we will hear a lot about over the next 12 months.

Tuesday kicked off with Nintendo’s conference which had become even more anticipated following the lacklustre pieces from Microsoft and Sony. The demoed a lovely looking version of Pikmin 3 as well as the interesting Lego City both being Wii U exclusives.

Nintendo had already revealed their Wii U Pro controller ahead of their main conference as well as their remarkably well designed Miiverse social application. They then used the majority of the remaining time focusing on the Wii U and it’s new pad which featured heavily in their new Nintendo Land virtual world.

Tuesday was not quite as long as Monday for the conferences but following Nintendo we got some footage of the glorious looking Star Wars 1313 game that is widely speculated to be a next generation game.

Wednesday and Thursday held smaller conferences but many websites posted articles in favour of  footage and previews for a lot more of the big future releases instead. We got several articles on the Wii U version of Arkham City, some gameplay from Gears Of War: Judgment and also some fantastic looking hardware from John Carmack (check it out – VR headsets).

The interesting thing taken out from this event was the distinct lack of new IP’s which indicates again that all the major console developers are focusing on the next generation. While last year saw the release of the Vita and the 3DS neither were on show in any great capacity. The 3DS did have it’s own smaller conference that showed of the new Luigi’s Mansion and Paper Mario.

All in all this was one of the less exciting E3 spectacles but hopefully that only means that next year will blow us all away. Unfortunately I also hope this trend of lacklustre events doesn’t continue for much longer as I plan my weekend at the Eurogamer Expo in September.

What games are you most excited about? Were their any games missing that you’d have loved to know more about? – if so place a comment below and I’ll see what I can dig up.