Day 0: And The Winners Are…
Every year there is conversation about who won E3 starting from day 0 – media briefing day – all the way up to the last day of the expo. It’s not just from the fans at home watching streams and reading previews/reviews from their favorite gaming sites – like EGMNOW of course – but on the show floor amongst game journalist themselves, myself included.
So at the end of day 0, I was asked, “Who do you think won today?” And without missing a beat, my answer was, “the gamers.”
The takeaway from the media briefings should be that each of the big console makers has something for everyone, and at every level of gaming.
Microsoft is more focused than ever on games – both on Windows 10 and on Xbox – evidenced by the strength of their line up. For the hardcore there’s the Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is a remastered version game created for the Xbox One, and the knowledge that Gears 4 looms on the horizon. Not to be forgotten is Halo 5: Guardians which launches October 27th, Dark Souls III, Tom Clancy’s: The Division, Tom Clancy’s: Rainbow Six: Siege. Then there’s Rise of the Tomb Raider, Hitman, Rare’s Rare Replay – a collection of 30 games created by the dev, playable arcade style on the Xbox One – Final Fantasy VII remade for PS4 and the launch of the (now funded) Shenmue 3 kickstarter to appeal to the nostalgia crowd. Hunger for the new? Well, there’s Horizon: Zero Dawn from the team that brought Killzone to PS4, ReCore from the makers of Metroid Prime and Keiji Inafune, Gigantic and Unravel. And of course, the new outings from franchise kings Mass Effect: Andromeda, Uncharted: A Thief’s End, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, and Forza 6.
And those are just the titles that I remember from memory after a full-day of pressers and live-tweet events. I didn’t even get into the indie developer love-fest, or the strong nod to mobile games from the day. But as a fan of video games you can’t help but look at the list of games above and avoid being overwhelmed by it.
