E3 has been an interesting one this year. The addition of new conferences has made it difficult to break things down into just the big three — Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. But let’s discuss things in those old-fashioned terms: who won E3?
Being perfectly honest, I think Nintendo is out of the running on this one. You might say they put themselves out of the running by choosing not to show the interesting games/hardware we already know they have in development.
Sony did the precise opposite. It brought the big guns. Sony appeared to go down a list of fanboy dreams and set about making every single one of them true. The Last Guardian, Shenmue III, the Final Fantasy VII remake. Regardless of whether it was a good idea or not, if we thought it sounded like good idea, Sony announced it! It was one of the most insane E3 conferences I’ve ever seen, just in terms of what was shown and the reaction to it.
Microsoft moved along with machine-like efficiency. Great announcements, good showings of good exclusive games. If you were being critical you might say it was E3 by numbers.
So which showing was best? It depends on the criteria you want to judge by. I’m going to say Sony. The second Sony showed The Last Guardian it was over for me, Not because of the game necessarily, more the history of the moment and what it meant. It was almost absurd to see the game in action once again. I honestly laughed when it happened. It felt that insane. It was one of those memorable E3 moments.
What do you think?
Comments
66 responses to “The Big Question: Who Had The Best Showing At E3?”
Sony was great (much better than expected).
MS was very good (also better than expected)
Nintendo was absolutely pathetic (as expected).
Basically unless the only console you own (or plan on buying) is a WiiU then EVERYBODY WINS!
I don’t win then 🙁
But I don’t have the time for more than one console at the moment.
I’d say Sony won though. A lot of the games I have been interested in have been Sony only, and nothing MS has done in years has interested me. The Rare collection is the first in a long time.
But I’m a Nintendo guy through and through. Was bad this year, but I’ve got a bit of a pile of shame I’m still working on since birthday and Christmas.
I really feel like Nintendo made some poor choices regarding which games to show. Yes, Zelda U was delayed, but they still could have shown something (so far we’ve only got the E3 trailer from last year and footage of Link riding Epona around.) They also could have announced some more third party games (since one of the promises of the wii U was that there would be more AAA games on there) but nope.
I frequently refer to my wii U as the “Zelda Tax”, but it’s looking like it might not even be that.
(ok to be fair I have enjoyed a lot of the wii U games I do have, but not a console buying level of enjoyment)
Piles of shame are very real!!!!
Agree with you. But lets think about next E3 for a second…would put my money on Nintendo winning that big time. Showing off their new console I predict….
I don’t know if Nintendo “wins” by showing off a new system 4 years after they launched their last one, particularly if that means their most loyal customers bought a WiiU that never got its own definitive Mario game and nothing at all from either the Zelda or Metroid series.
I do agree though. A new Nintendo system, particularly one showing a proper, next gen Zelda (maybe even a Mario/ Metroid too) would likely trump anything the others could produce without new hardware.
Couldn’t agree with you more, as a moderately early adopter of Wii U, I gotta say I am pissed that the only exciting thing they announced was Starfox.
I think I would have been ok with them announcing more DS focused games, if any of them had actually been interesting. Because, yes Nintendo, fans want TWO animal crossing spin offs.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed Mario Kart, Pikmin and Hyrule Warriors amoung others on the Wii U, but none of them are the type of game I would call “Console defining” the way Wind Waker was for the GC or Mario Galaxy was for the Wii.
I actually live in fear that Zelda U will go the way of Twilight princess and be pushed to the next console.
I highly doubt it will be pushed to the next console. The WiiU hasn’t had it’s own Zelda yet, the GameCube already had. The NX will be shown next year? When they first showed off the Wii, it was only the box, not even the controller. I wouldn’t expect the NX before holidays 2017.
Zelda was originally slated for 2015, but has not slipped into 2016. No way are they going to push it back further.
Nintendo was pathetic as expected? Is that expectation based on previous years, cause they nailed it at least last year and the year before that
If 8 seconds of Legend of Zelda: Phantom Game had actually turned into a real thing over the past year then I might have given them a pass on last year.
It’s not about last year anyway, the expectation was based on THIS year and the idea that they won’t announce anything that couldn’t be pumped out to fill their empty release schedule.
Here’s what I said yesterday:
Also:
So…. You tell me if my expectations were correct?
Nintendo actually had two very impressive years, yes. But this year’s expectations were based on this year as @foggy said. For me, they actually performed worse. I wasn’t expecting anything mind blowing but I wasn’t expecting such a shocker. I’m not a Star Fox fan but was pretty damn disappointed Star Fox was so… bland in terms of everything. Everything else was known. A lot of it had to do with the amount of spin-offs they announced. The rest, the fact not a single peek at anything they’re working on.
That’s a tough choice. Microsoft did announce the backwards-compatibility-game-porting scheme, and that’s (potentially) a pretty massive deal. Their new controller looks set to take over and dominate the pro-gaming market, moving the Xbone to the top of the list in that field. They also were the ones to show us MGSV, Tomb Raider, and Dark Souls 3. It seemed like a very strong show overall.
On the other hand, Sony had some surprises up their sleeve too. Three big surprises actually. I don’t think anyone seriously expected The Last Guardian, Shenmue III, and FFVII remake to all make an appearance. That’s the holy trifecta of at least a full decade of nerdwant right there. Those announcements – at least two of them, anyway – were niche titles, for their hardcore fans, the long-term life-long dedicated gamers.
I voted Sony, but I’d be happy to call this one a tie.
Yeah, the BC announcement is pushing me towards finally getting an XBone if they increase the library to a reasonable size. The MS conference had more games that I actually want to play but will probably be playing on PS4. The Sony conference was full of carefully calculated surprises, but none that I really care about (Last Guardian looks crap – prove me wrong, Sony!)
Best announcement for me so far has been South Park in the Ubisoft conference, so I guess they win?
Remember MS’ last gen’s backward compatibility. 100 games at launch may mean 110 games in total before they abandon BC, claiming that no-one wants it any more.
And I say this as someone who desperately wants BC as Rock Band’s making me buy an Xbone.
I cant believe people dont remember what happened with the 360 in terms of BC at all… If it happens again, people will still go “who cares about playing old games?” whilst they also say “OMG *insert 360 game* is being re-released on the xbone one!”
to be fair, (according to wiki)
North America
279 games were backwards compatible at launch, and by the end of the list been updated, 461
apparently just over half the games.
Thats actually not too bad and nowhere near the level of hyperbole people are saying about how bad it was.
Perhaps, but I swear I remember reading an article that asked what happened to more BC titles for the 360, as they werent releasing more BC titles at a frequent pace. Was more bulk releases that were far and few between.
Plus, it just seems a bit misleading to say that the Xbox One has BC when its conditional
Fully aware of this, hence “if they increase the library to a reasonable size”. Still very skeptical.
Sony had the more impressive announcements but for the most part it’s stuff we won’t even get to see in action until after next year’s E3, or the year after in the case of Shenmue III. Also I know that people have been waiting for the Last Guardian since it was announced as a friggin PS2 title, but I don’t really get what’s supposed to be so good about it. I’m also not a big Final Fantasy fan though I appreciate the importance of an FFVII remake to those who’ve been clamouring for it.
All in all though, Microsoft gave a solid showing and most of it falls within the foreseeable future. Backwards compatibility might have limited appeal and not be a huge long term benefit but for me personally, as someone with a backlog of 360 games I want to replay (not to mention those I haven’t gotten to) the prospect of those games being available a little longer on current-gen hardware is a big deal. I was seriously contemplating buying a couple of 360s cheap at the end of it’s production cycle just in case I had no other way to play certain games if my active 360 died.
The Last Guardian is a big deal because of the pedigree of the people behind it. These are the same people who made Ico and Shadow of the Colossus so, yeah – anything they make is going to be a big deal.
BC also allows MS to ultimately add 360 games to the Xbone store as they are made compatible. That’s f*cking awesome, particularly as MS is pretty good at discounting games as they get older.
If I can download South Park Stick of Truth, or X-Com: Enemy Within for $5 in a year or two directly to my Xbone harddrive then that’s pretty cool in my book. The 360 is a MASSIVE library of arcade and full priced titles.
It also means that when they announce the Games with Gold games for the month, Xbone owners could potentially have access to the full-priced titles that the 360 gets. If I opened up the Games with Gold tab on my Xbone this month and saw Just Cause 2 there as well as the Lame Pool Game and Massive Phallus then that would be much cooler.
I didn’t even think about the potential of adding all that stuff to the store, or Games with Gold… that’s brilliant.
Honestly though… they could have sold the backwards compatibility thing with a few scenes saying Red Dead Redemption can now be played on Xbox One.
Except it can’t yet. MS needs to get a license because it is technically republishing every BC title. If the 360 disc could be played natively then that would be different, but the disc only unlocks a digital download of Xbone software. How many publishers are going to let MS give away their software for free, even older titles? They get nothing out of it – MS gets all the kudos!
How can you decide who ‘won’ E3 before the PC show is over? Or is the entire PC gaming world not considered big enough to play with the big boys?
Sony had the most titles that I was interested in so for me they “won”.
Bethesda
Out of the console manufacturers, Sony had the big names and great surprises out of nowhere
after the Bethesda conference everything else felt a little lack luster.
If I had to decide I would say MS. Purely because the three big games that Sony announced, one is a remake and the the other two I guess I am just not that interested in.
So congratulations MS you won by default.
Yes. BETHESDA.
The professionalism, smoothness and segues were all top-botch. No cringe at all imo.
Top-botch. Lol.
Sony and Microsoft for me both showed at great levels — but I would have to say Microsoft. They showed more than just video games there. The demo they showed with the Hololens was just spectacular and apparently the Hololens demo featuring a primer for Halo 5’s Warzone mode is astonishing to experience. The fact that they showed off more than just games but also their technology and console improvement (e.g. backwards compatibility) just takes takes the cake for me. Hololens/10
EDIT: I just have to mention the implications for such a technology such as Hololens, the way it’s turning out, it can revolutionise so many things in office work today. This is a step into the future.
I have to say the Hololens is cool, but the extremely narrow FOV is a concern. I wonder why Sony didn’t mention their hea.dset
It’s more than a concern, it is kind of a total con. I tried it out, and the FOV is tiny, and the experience nothing at all like they keep portraying.
Watch that movie on a holographic wall sized TV? Cool! Oh, I can only see 1/6th of the screen at a time without moving my head? WTF?
It’s a prototype. Calling it a con is like calling the Oculus Rift a con because the dev kit 1 had a terrible resolution.
as @lambomann007 implies, it will get better. The fact that it exists and works is amazing enough. AR technology is very interesting and it’s the stuff of fiction but hey, this tech shows we’re one step closer to making it a reality.
I think it was pretty even between MS and Sony this year. To be honest I was more excited and impressed by Fallout than anything purely Sony or MS.
MS was great, I thought no way they would be beaten.
Then Sony beat them but not by much.
Then Nintendo dropped the ball.
Bethesda!
But out of the big three I can’t separate Msoft and Sony with Nintendo barely registering a blip.
Looking back on it, Sony really went for the jugular this year… but it just didn’t do it for me.
Their big franchises just don’t do appeal to me.
I’ve played Ico and Shadow of the Colossis, but I didn’t really enjoy them… and The Last Guardian holds no appeal for me.
What they showed of Uncharted just reminded me of what I hate about Uncharted (long sections that are just begging to be cocked up, requiring you to go back to the start).
I never played Shenmu so a new Shenmu game doesn’t interest me.
And Final Fantasy 7… how do you even remake that? If you keep the same battle system people are gonna hate it, but if you change it people will hate that too.
What the heck was that Batman trailer, a cop killing people? who thought that was a good idea?
The CoD announcement seemed a little petty… but good for them.
I how Sony feels about the shift in perception of Destiny… do they feel they’ve gotten much out of their deal?
Horizon looked cool though
I love Halo, but even that demo seemed a little… I don’t know.
The BC stuff is nice, and it may incentivise people to get rid of their old consoles.
I’m really jazzed for the new Tomb Raider game.
I’m glad weather is coming to mainline Forza games, but it’s disappointing that it’s not dynamic.
There was a time when Gears would have been a great way to end a show, but this time it seemed like a let down (maybe it was because it wasn’t being demo’d by Cliffy-B).
I’ll probably buy one of those controllers, but that could’ve been done with a press release.
They talked about BC being one of the most requested features for xbox one, but they didn’t mention background music? That’s the most popular feature. Even acknowledge that it’ll come with the Windows 10 update.
That game about the blind girl was stunningly beautiful though… I mean it looked gorgeous.
I think these conferences are notable by what wasn’t there…
Where was Journey for PS4? that was announced at the PS4 launch, and it’s still not out.
Where was The Witness?
Where was Gran Tourismo?
Quantum Break, Scalebound, & Crackdown were all moved to Gamescom.
For my money, I don’t think anyone really won E3.
Microsoft infuriates me because they should be doing so much better.
They have this enourmous war chest, but never seem to do much with it.
Holy crap that’s a load of text.
At this stage I fully expect Sony to come out and announce that they’re going to develop Half Life 3, Starcraft: Ghost, and Rockstars Agent themselves.
Just so they can complete the collection of games that were never going to happen.
Also, how damn large is Platinum now?.. is there a Japanese game they’re not developing some section of?
Journey for PS4 is due out this summer (northern, so winter here). I suspect they didn’t show it or The Witness or any of the other stuff (where were Santa Monica with their new God of War? Where were Quantic Dream with their new game full of EMOTIONS!??) mainly due to time constraints.
To be honest, I thought the biggest problem with Sony’s conference was that it went on too long. It started out great, dropping megatons left, right and centre. Then went through a real flat patch in the middle with all the multiplatform stuff (Destiny, Assassn’s Creed, COD, all the EA/Disney Star Wars stuff), before picking up at the end with Uncharted, which looked fantastic. It would have been better to dump that middle section, just make the announcements later on via press release or something rather than bog down the pacing and dilute the awesomeness of the rest of the show.
I’m not sure if that’s actually the case, though. I mean yes, MS as an entire company have more money than God, but the gaming part of it is very, very small potatoes. It is not their core business and is unlikely to become so. So just because MS have a metric shitload of money, that doesn’t mean they’re willing to spend it on their gaming business.
They’re actually kind of the exact opposite of Sony. Sony’s gaming division is successful, but it’s part of a much larger company that is struggling financially overall. But the gaming business is pretty much the number 1 priority for Sony, because it’s about the only thing they’ve got that’s making money when everything else they’ve got is leaking cash all over the place. MS’s gaming division, on the other hand, is part of a very profitable larger corporation, but as a result isn’t valued by that company to the same extent. If you took the gaming division out of Sony right now, the whole company would probably collapse. If you took the gaming division out of MS, it’s questionable whether any of the people at the top would even notice the blip.
Sony, without a doubt. The Last Guardian has been almost a gag call for the last few E3s. When Sony started their presentation with this announcement, it was not starting with a bang, it was with a megabomb! Then to end with that amazing Uncharted clip, flawless victory!
The presenters need to stop sounding like they’re reading from cue cards. There was a lull in the presentation during the middle. Otherwise, an amazing showing, and I can hardly imagine how Sony will top it next year.
No Man’s Sky looks awesome! It seems to have everything that I am hoping for from Star Citizen, and more.
What about that freaky dude from Disney Infinity. He sounded like a touter yelling ‘roll up, roll up’ outside a big top 🙂
Terrible E3 this year from all major parties
Sony have all but killed of the vita which is a shame
Not as many really new and impressive titles it just seemed to be re-hashing titles that have been teased for the past couple of years (the division / rainbow six / uncharted / mirrors edge) of which some don’t have confirmed release dates :-S
along with the yearly releases (fifa / nhl / madden / CoD)
Granted some new titles where a pleasant surprise (South Park / dishonored 2 / for honor / Starfox / Horizon) but overall it has felt lacking
Problem with Sony is the ‘big guns’ they showed are what they’ll be showing at the next 2 E3s before they’re released.
Nah, I reckon we’ll see Horizon sooner rather than later….
Thing I’m most excited for is Ghost Recon!
Honestly everything was pretty disappointing.
Microsoft was boring, and showed no gameplay of any new IP’s, Halo looked like Halo, Gears like sadly too much like gears. The fact they snubbed Scalebound to show off a Tech Demo for Minecraft that no one will use for more than 5 minutes erks me a lot, Cuphead was the only good looking indie game they showed.
Sony was Slightly better, FF VII is cool, but obviously no where near development. I have no care for Last Guardian, but nice to see it isn’t canned, and i have pretty much the same feelings about Shenmue 3.
Nintendo dropped the ball so hard. Star Fox and Fire Emblem where the only interesting things in that presentation, and the lack of SMT X FE proper gameplay footage is really annoying.
all in all, we are back in the age of disappointing E3’s.
Nintendo has had two fantastic E3s in a row (2013 & 2014). The release schedule in 2016 has been quite good too with Kirby, Yoshi, Splatoon, Captain Toad, Xenoblade, StarFox + Indies + good DLC + Virtual Console releases.
So it’s not a bad time to be a Wii U owner.
That said, the big question mark about E3 is whether they have much more planned for the console after Zelda. A sparse 2016 line up, NX on the horizon and no real surprises left in 2015 are all ominous signs.
Why is everybody bagging on Nintendo? They had muppets!
There, I fixed it for you 😛
I don’t care if Nintendo had puppets. Nothing beats a holographic Minecraft map. Sony disappointed me in a lot of ways. Sure they have uncharted 4, but for me that’s it. Everything else was average. In my view Microsoft had way more exclusives and had a better presentation.
Except that the holographic minecraft map is a lie, so anything beats it really.
Sony had the biggest surprises and probably ‘won’ by any real measure, but they also did the poorest job explaining why you’d want their system in 2015. All the high-profile things they’ve shown are 2016 or later.
Microsoft’s showing was very much 2015 focused and focused on showing why you need an Xbox One this year, and I think they did a much better job telling that story. Much more focused and well-run presentation as well.
I don’t think Sony really needs anything for Holiday 2015. After all, they have the co-marketing on Battlefront. They did really well with the Destiny campaign, and so I think the only thing they really have to worry about is Xbox rumoured to be marketing Fallout 4. I think Star Wars is going to sell a shit ton more than Fallout 4, to be fair.
True, but I’ve had a PS4 since December 2013 and have barely ever used it for games. I don’t regret the purchase but since I also have a decent PC I’ve been using that as my primary system, which means that multi-platform stuff gets factored out entirely and that leaves the PS4 lineup for the next 6-12 months looking a little bleak.
Fair enough. In terms of making people buy consoles for the end of year holidays though, I think Star Wars would have amazing pulling power, and obviously PS4 will be front and centre in all the COD marketing. Sony would probably be sending its IP out to die if released against those two monsters. Rise of the Tomb Raider is going to struggle, with Black Ops 3 coming out a few days before it, and Battlefront coming out a week after it. Fallout 4 is releasing on the same date as Tomb Raider. I don’t think Sony has marketing on that one though, although I could be wrong.
Me too. Haven’t used it for months. I do love it, but I’m expecting it’ll get a shit load of use next year.
I thought MS won on the basis that a lot of their games shown are almost complete and I could see a lot of them being very entertaining.
I thought Sony really sold the “dream” (with the exception of U4). Great salesmanship but their showing was too long-term focused. I was really looking forward to no man sky but the demo did not impress me much. i also thought last guardian was a bit average. horizon looked awesome though.
Out of those 3, Sony gets my vote. But I want to comment on what everyone is excited for; Fallout 4.
I thought their demo for Fallout 4 was outstanding. They brought everything they had and presented so well. They didn’t over-do it with terms I always hate dev’s using like “innovative” or “right-at-your-fingertips”. The guy was funny without trying too hard, and although I was always going to buy FO4 at some point, I’m not a giant fan of the series so I would have waited a few months. Not anymore, im getting that bad boy on day one.
Both Sony and Microsoft did great but I would probably choose Sony due to the fanfare of Last Guardian, FFVII and Shenmue. Also Horizon looked incredible.
Someone voted for Nintendo. Bless em.
Microsoft mostly because most of the stuff they showed I’m actually going to be able to play within the next year. A lot of Sony’s stuff looks like it’ll still be at e3 in a year’s time.
Sony’s Last Guardian and Shenmue reveals were okay I guess, but Last Guardian looks pretty boring and I don’t have a clue what Shenmue is.
Whereas Microsoft blew it out of the park with that Hololens demo, and backwards compatibility.
But really, we all know the winner was Bethesda.
Like everyone else I also have to give it to Bethesda, mainly because everything they showed has hard release dates and those dates are generally this year.
MS, Sony and Nintendo had hardly any release dates but out of the main 3 Sony had the most excitement for me (except for that Black Ops crap)
You can play 3 full console zelda’s on the Wii U all of which Upscale their original games.
If you like Zelda its a great console.
Why do I have to vote for one of these three? Did Bethesda, EA, Ubisoft, Square Enix and AMD suddenly not have press conferences?
If you look at my Facebook wall FF7 won E3.
Bethesda won this year, nintendo decided not to show the stuff they knew people wanted to see, MS’s biggest announcement was BC which should of been in the XONE to begin with and sony had a game that was due out years ago, asking for handouts for their kickstarter and something that should of been in the Square Enix show.