Grading the E3ish Press Conferences

The E3 is dead, long live the E3ish

The second week of June has always been known as the most wonderful time in the game’s industry. All developers crunching and rushing their trailers to only get 10 seconds on a highlight reel. But it didn’t matter, all eyes were on the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or E3). But after years of decline, major publishers dropping out, and a literal pandemic, E3 is no more.

Summer of Gaming, Summer Game Fest, Digital Directs, Nintendo Directs, Xbox Showcase, State of Play, and many more events have blossomed from the grave of E3. They can call it whatever they want, but that second week of June will always be E3 in my heart.

Anyway, I love giving gaming industry opinions , so of course I’m going to talk about all presentations during this period I’m calling E3ish. Mr. game awards himself, Geoffrey Keighley, did instruct us to come into all of this with low expectations, so this should be fun.

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PlayStation State of Play

Four years ago I took the bold decision to move from a PlayStation 4 to an Xbox Series S for this new generation of consoles. I’ve always been a big fan of Sony’s first-party titles, so I was scared that I was making the wrong decision switching to Xbox. Well, for a 4th year in a row, I still don’t regret that decision.

The State of Play stream opened up on May 30th with Concord, a game set in a Star Wars-y, Guardians of the Galaxy-esk universe, with an interesting set of characters. I was invested all the way until gameplay started. And surprise! it’s another Overwatch. The industry doesn’t need another Overwatch. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it in 2016 when it launched, but that idea has been beaten to death, even by the same developers when they tried to release Overwatch 2. It doesn’t seem to offer anything new from what dozens of games already offer. Also, I love how we got someone on screen saying “hey we’re gonna start with a cinematic trailer and then show gameplay”, but it felt more like a desperate “please don’t leave, there is gameplay I swear!!!!”. It’s not even the only Overwatch-like game shown, as Marvel Rivals was shown just a few moments later.

Concord took almost one third of the whole presentation, btw. Then we move into more quick-fire announcements, including the PC port of God of War and a new Dynasty Warriors game, which is always a nice to have for those fans. The stream then transitions into a game in the Love Nikki series which looked outstanding, I might not be too into the dress up games, but the game looks extremely beautiful and HD.

Ballad of Antara was shown next, can’t say much about this game, but it looked very reminiscent of Sekiro and Souls-like games that have been popping out everywhere lately. This was followed by a reel from Sony’s biggest whoopsie: PlayStation VR 2. It is outstanding how PS VR went from being an affordable entry way into VR on it’s first iteration, to an overpriced piece of hardware that cannot compete with the Quest headsets. This really just feels like an Apple move from Sony, putting something extremely expensive just to see who buys it.

Next, they showed Until Dawn, a remastered version for PS5. This game already looked amazing on PS4, so more people to play it is always nice. Speaking of re-releases, we got a look at Silent Hills 2 Remake, which has gotten a ton of hate for no reason at all???? can someone explain why people are hating on this remake? it looks fine to me.

The showcase ended with 2 great games: The first one was Monster Hunter: Wilds, which looked amazing, MH has a bunch of fans and I’m happy they keep getting HD games outside 3DS and Switch. And finally, Astro Bot, a very 3D Mario-y platformer with a ton of charm. It looked so fun, and it was filled to the brim with references to other PlayStation properties. It was nice and fun, but not the way one would expect Sony to end their presentations on.

A very underwhelming showcase for sure. I usually measure Sony’s presentations depending on how much I regret going with Xbox for this generation, and sadly for Sony, I still feel I made a great choice. Sony’s presentations and games don’t really move the needle for me anymore, and this one was no better than a C-

Summer Game Fest

My original plan was to describe a play-by-play of each presentation, but with how long Summer Game Fest went, I think I’m better off doing some highlights only. I was really happy that this was a live show, even if it was mostly trailers, seeing a crowd react to new announcements makes me shed a tear from the pre-pandemic E3 days.

The show started on June 7th with Geoffrey himself addressing the current situation in the gaming industry, with massive layoffs left and right. The tone quickly changed as he then displayed the top 10 games on Steam right now, 8 being indie games, which is an incredible achievement and it says a lot about how the gaming industry is different than others. They addressed an elephant in the room and turned it into something positive without really going into detail about why the elephant is there, and I think it worked well for a live audience.

The first game was a bit crazy to me: a Lego Horizon’s game. Crazy because we get Lego games from like the BIG franchises with dozens of memorable characters, e.g., Star Wars. I literally don’t know the name of any other character in that franchise other than Aloy. But it looked fun nonetheless, especially since they went all in with the Lego Movie type of animation.

We also got a trailer for a new Quidditch game?? This was a pleasant surprise considering there hasn’t been one in over 20 years, and I’m all in for this. Next, there was a weird move by Ubisoft to present Star Wars Outlaws in here, considering they had a showcase of their own in a few days.

One big moment was BlumHouse, producers of movies like M3GAN and Get Out, creating a publishing company for games, specifically for indie developers creating horror games. This is a Big move and we’ll likely see more of these cases in the future, to keep driving the indie game scene forward by investing in creative ideas from smaller teams.

Speaking of indie publishing, InnerSloth - creators of AmongUs - decided to create a indie game fund for smaller developers called OuterSloth. A studio, that suddently got very popular and got a lot of money for it, deciding to invest in other smaller indie studios so they get their chance as well tells a beautiful story. I wish them the best and I hope we get a lot of great games from it.

One highlight of this show was just the abundance of indie games that got to be in the spotlight. Games like Neva (from the creators of Gris), Tears of Metal, Fear the Spotlight, Cairn, Wanderstop, and so many more were announced during this presentation. They got almost as much spotlight as the big AAA games, and I’m so glad they got that.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of big AAA games also got to appear on stage, like Star Wars Outlaws, Alan Wake II, Valorant and Metaphor. They certainly got more time to present their games, but never compromising the indies. As a Sonic fan, I was very happy to finally see Sonic x Shadow gameplay and I’m happy to report it looks freaking awesome.

Summer Game Fest was a solid B. It gave a platform for many indie developers to show off their games, which is always great. Seeing and hearing the crowd was legit fun, and it brought an energy that both Sony and Microsoft lacked this year. The two factors that prevented this from being better were the length and the lack of a real Big announcement. I felt exhausted by the end of the 2-hour stream, and this is not including the Day of the Devs and Devolver Direct presentations that followed, which took around 2 more hours.

Wholesome Direct

Speaking of highlighting indies: Wholesome Direct!! I’m always fond of these streams, and many of my favorite games are always announced through this platform. The Wholesome streams often times suffer from trying to show too much in too little time, so no game really gets a proper spotlight. Let’s see how they did this year for Wholesome Direct 2024, which premiered on June 8th.

I won’t go into too much detail on the games shown - I have a separate post planned for just the games - but we NEED to talk about Sqweakross, picross with a rat-themed game is brilliant. The blocks you color are actually cheese! and they turn into furniture you can use to decorate your rat home!!! It’s like animal crossing but you solve fun puzzles instead of grind.

The direct handled the pace well, and I’m happy that it took time to promote a tshirt where part of the profits are donated to an organization that helps kids in Palestine. Additionally, they allowed devs to show off and talk about their game, which gave a more intimate approach, since games were presented by the people who made them!

One big surprise was the abundance of demos available out of this presentation. Nothing better than seeing a game you’re interested in and being able to play it immediately.

In terms of pacing, this Wholesome Direct was so much better than past years. Shining a spotlight at the actual devs and taking their time helped maintain the pace. The one downside, at least personally, is that the selection of games was not incredible like other years; no game had me jumping up and down in excitement like other years (with the exception of Sqweakross). And for this reason I’ll leave it at a B+

Xbox Games Showcase

Xbox had so much to prove for their showcase. After 4 years of fumbling on release dates, studios closing and countless courtroom cases, this was the moment to really show what they have been cooking for the past 4 years. I’m getting ahead of my closing comments, but they sure delivered and I am happy to be an Xbox owner this generation.

Now that Xbox owns Activision, they started with the big guns . Literally. Call of Duty kicked off the Xbox Games Showcase on June 9th with Black Ops 6. Not a favorite of mine at all, but this is Xbox showing off the yearly CoD game, just because they can.

And then they brought the even bigger guns, once again literally, with Doom: The Dark Ages. And it looked AWESOME. It’s very funny to see prequels that, just because of the fact they were developed later, show more technological advances.

One thing this presentation handled pretty well was the gameplay vs cinematic trailers. Most new IPs showed a good chunk of gameplay for players to get the idea of how the game is. For established franchises, gameplay was either kept at a minimum or not shown at all, providing only a cinematic trailer. This was an excellent choice for games like Dragon Age or Diablo, that are well established franchises that you can easily lookup gameplay online.

They weren’t so good with this concept last year, specifically for South of Midnight from Compulsion Games, which was shown on a quick trailer that left more questions than answers. This year it had its time to shine in a 5 minute, full gameplay presentation. And it looked AWESOME, definitely the star of the show for me.

The Xbox showcase had a mission to, indeed, showcase many games that were announced ages ago but we knew nothing about. We got a great look at the aforementioned South of Midnight, as well as Perfect Dark, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Metal Gear Solid ∆. It’s great to see these games alive and well, with release dates on the next couple of years.

Another HUGE highlight for me was Mixtape, a game from Beethoven and Dinosaur, set in the 90s where you play as a group of teenagers and crazy stuff happen. The music selection was outstanding and the game looked crazy fun. Once again, an indie studio getting a chance to show up in the big stage to show off their game and get people interested. Kudos to Xbox for their extensive showing of indie games during this presentation.

The number of games listed here that are going directly to Game Pass is outstanding. Xbox is betting all their chips to this service and you can tell they are paying good money for it. Seeing a trailer you really enjoyed followed by “play it day one with Game Pass” is always a delight.

The presentation ended with the reveal of Gears of Wars E-day. Again, a well established franchise that got a cinematic trailer to get the fans excited, and newcomers can always go look for gameplay online or try it with Game Pass.

Overall, this has been one of Xbox’s best showings yet. It brought a lot of interesting games, giving the stage to AAA and indie studios alike. My Xbox Series S has been a great way to play through my backlog thanks to its great backwards compatibility options, but this is the first time I’m looking forward to the future of this console. The one downside is that it was also a bit of a long stream, but other than that it was an almost perfect presentation and it deserves an A+.

Ubisoft Forward

This presentation should’ve been called “Expect the expected”. We knew all of Ubisoft’s big projects going into this one, and even had a glimpse from the Xbox and Summer Game Fest streams getting a good look at Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and Star Wars: Outlaws, respectively. So, what did Ubi show this year? the answer may not surprise you.

The game started on June 10th with an Star Wars orchestra which was a nice touch since this was also a live presentation with a crowd and everything. We got a good look at Star Wars Outlaws, coming out this year. Gotta say, it is looking amazing, even if I’m not that much of a Star Wars fan to begin with. It’s rare that we get an almost 15 minute walkthrough of a game in these kind of events, so it was great to see this game outside trailers.

The presentation was filled with the usual stuff as well. The mandatory updates for Xdefiant, The Crew, Rainbow Six, Rocksmith and many other Ubi properties (Surprisingly, no Just Dance 2025?). Prince of Persia got a couple of updates as well, and the announcement of a Sands of Time remake… again.

The show ended with a long section dedicated to another very popular Ubisoft property: Assassin’s Creed. The demo was absolutely incredible, it showed everything it needed to show. Showing AC and Star Wars in other stages didn’t detract from the experience of seeing a full 10+ minute demo. I’m glad they took their time with these two.

That’s kind of it, though. It started and ended with a big presentation for their flagship titles for this year, which were awesome, and had a bunch of filler in the middle. I cannot give it anything higher than a B- because it lacked anything really “new”, even though what they did present was solid.

(Every year I pray for a new Rayman game, and every year I am disappointed)

Nintendo Direct

During the Switch generation, Nintendo has presented banger after banger after banger when it comes to Nintendo Directs. They have become synonymous with “hype” online, and often spawn thousands of reaction videos with how wild their announcements are. With the Switch on its way out, we are starting to see lots of remakes populate the release calendar, so for this Nintendo Direct, there were a lot of questions if they could deliver the goods, as they often do.

The Nintendo Direct premiered on June 18th with the announcement of a brand new Mario & Luigi game. Quite the big surprise for two reasons: the studio who worked on this games closed, and this is the third Mario RPG we get in, what, the past 2 years? Even if two of those were remakes, we’re seeing a lot of Mario outside your typical platformer, just like we did during the more experimental GameCube, GBA and DS days. I wish this becomes a norm for the future of these RPG franchises.

Speaking of RPGs, we got A TON on this presentation. Mario & Luigi, Fantasian Neo Dimension, 3 Dragon Quest remakes, Darkest Dungeon 2, The Hundred Line, Romancing SaGa 2 remake, Phantom Brave… I would’ve never expected these to be the focus of Nintendo presentations, but I’m happy for fans of the genre.

As expected, there were a long list of remakes, which are often safe bets towards the tail end of a console’s lifecycle. One highlight of this was Donkey Kong Country Returns HD (which I’m so sad they didn’t name it “Returns Again”), which already looked great for a Wii game.

Speaking of remakes, I was fully expecting a Zelda remake of some sort, either ports of Twilight Princess/Wind Waker, or remakes of the Oracle series, and I would’ve been extremely happy with those. HOWEVER, we got an entirely new Zelda game in the Link’s Awakening engine!!!!!!! where you finally play as Zelda!!!!!! and it’s coming out THIS YEAR!!!!! Ahem, yeah I think I might play that later.

There was a lot of third party support on this presentation as well, with Dragon Quest, Stray, Marvel vs Capcom, and more. And hey, Just Dance 2025 was officially announced here instead of Ubisoft Forward, so there you go, the game is real.

There were a lot of smaller games to be excited about, like Super Mario Party Jamboree and Ace Attorney Investigations finally getting that re-release 15 years later. But we’re all here for that one last game announcement as the screen fades to black… and it’s Metroid Prime 4, finally shown after being announced 7 years ago! Even if it wasn’t really a good trailer in my opinion, It’s nice to see this game alive and well in 2024, with at least a release window for next year.

This Nintendo Direct was clearly showing the age of the Switch. From the first party standpoint, we got tons of remakes, recycling and repurposing. That doesn’t really diminish the quality of the games, trust me, I’m beyond excited for Zelda, but you can tell they are saving their IPs for the next console. Despite this, this was still a strong show to wrap up E3ish. A B+ feels appropriate for this presentation. We might not get another Nintendo Direct in some time, probably until the next console, but this was a good way of wrapping up this last year of the Switch.

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The spirit of E3 was felt during these last couple of weeks of trailers, announcements and live presentations. In fact, the biggest difference was the huge breathing room we had between presentations. It’s wild to think there was a time we were getting 3 or 4 press conferences a day, yet now we were getting no more than 1 big presentation a day, with Nintendo and PlayStation even refusing to participate in the same week as the others.

I was not planning on turning this post into a love letter for the deceased Electronic Entertainment Expo. However, this is the first time in over 6 years that the gaming industry felt connected, like it used to be in those 4 crazy days of E3 every year. I hope this trend continues, and all major companies keep working together to make that second week of June what it used to be.