E3 2012

EA and Ubisoft both did great presentations at this years E3 and kept it interesting, but out of the three hardware manufacturers I think the marginal winner of the event was Sony.

It seemed disappointing that there was no new hardware shown off but none of the main players are really due to reveal anything.  I think we did not learn anything about the Wii U that we did not already know except that very few of the big games being released next spring will be available for it.

Microsoft's smartglass was not at all the hardware which the name implies, but an application to turn your tablet or smartphone into a controller for the Xbox 360.  There are many uses for this but as far as gaming is concerned it will be useable as a game controller and additional game info can be displayed on the extra screen.  In the example we were shown Halo 4 was the game used and I find this telling.  Halo is a Microsoft game.  Third party developers might well be more reluctant to put in the extra time and effort to work in this extra feature and it is likely to put costs up.  The Xbox currently has the slight advantage that some games tend to be a little bit cheaper on that platform.  They could lose that advantage by insisting that developers exploit this feature and I could not see many gamers abandoning the purpose built controller in order to use their phone to play an Xbox game.

Xbox somewhat redeemed themselves by showing to the world Halo 4 which looks like a great game.  The Halo series is the only thing that I feel I miss out on by not having an Xbox.

If I did not have a PS3 I would miss out on far more and that will be even more the case in the future.  Sony announced that the Heavy Rain makers Quantic Dream will be releasing a new game called Beyond: Two Souls.  There was not much in the trailer in the way of gameplay but I trust this developer.  They also showed a new God of War game and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, which is a multiplayer fighting game and crosses over between the PS3 and Vita, so that players on the two platforms can compete against each other.  It looks like outrageous fun.  The last scoop they had was a new Assassin's Creed game for the Vita which has a female protagonist.  It looks like it takes place in a 3D world like the other AC games and seems to have great potential, though not much was shown.

As far as what went on on stage was concerned it was (as far as I could tell from watching it streamed on the web) a bit of a rubbish E3.  I might have thought that Rockstar and 2K parent company Take-Two could have done an onstage presentation and told us more about Borderlands 2 and GTA V but no such thing emerged.

Maybe next year will be better.