E3: Review and Roundup

Now that E3 is finally in its days of settling, it seems now is a good time to "grade" each major publishers performance. Take in mind that this will not be based on their conference alone -- it will also account for things they announced at other conferences, and during the showcase days of E3.

BETHESDA
FINAL GRADE: B-
I liked Bethesda's showing mostly because it was very straight forward. Besides the dumb Elder Scrolls card game, they pretty much showed off exactly what everyone wanted. Todd "The Bomb" Howard got even me excited for Fallout 4, the DOOM trailer that none of us thought we would care about was actually pretty lengthy and interesting, Fallout Shelter is actually a fun little unique game, and we finally got confirmation of Dishonored 2.

MICROSOFT
FINAL GRADE: B
I've never, to this day, owned a Xbox, but I'm always willing to be persuaded to get one. Though I wasn't really interested this time either, it's now clear that Phil Spencer is doing an excellent job in terms of turning the company around after their abysmal performances in the last few years. Rare is finally free from its shackles to do whatever it wants, as well as a new IP from the creators of Megaman and Metroid Prime coming exclusively to the Xbox One. Also -- though the lineup for it as of now is very sparse -- backwards compatibility is an incredibly interesting feature, as well as one that Sony cannot compete in due to hardware constraints. This conference was quite enough to keep me, as a PS4 owner, worried (Though as it turns out, I would end up being very surprised).

UBISOFT
FINAL GRADE: D+
The Ubisoft conference left me incredibly impressed with the lineup they had, though that feeling of impressiveness slowly melted away when I realized that I still really didn't care for any of the games that Ubisoft was releasing. I'll admit that the live Siege demo they had actually got me a little interested, but beyond that everything they showed consisted of the same boring games they release every year, as well as a new title that just looked like those games that they release every year.

EA
FINAL GRADE: F
I expected nothing, and I was still let down. From the fact that 80% of the show was just sports, it was clear that the only thing they really had to show was Star Wars Battlefront -- and when they finally did show the gameplay trailer, there was nothing that was really holding me in. It just seemed like another dull FPS that you could occasionally switch to a third person mode -- disappointing, seeing as how hyped the original Free Radical trailer got me. Like with Ubisoft, I think I'm going to skip out on EA games yet again.

SONY
FINAL GRADE: A-
As I said before, coming into the Sony conference I was pretty worried. How could Sony possibly beat out Microsoft? I probably thought something vaguely resembling that. Oh boy, was I wrong.

First of all, some expected leaks were confirmed: FF7 Remake, Shemue III, and The Last Guardian. In addition, some exclusives we thought only vaguely of turned out to be looking incredible -- Horizon: Zero Dawn and Dreams to name two. And on top of all that, a series of smaller bonuses and timed exclusives for the more popular games being released this year and next. Microsoft did good, but who was expecting such a series of megatons to drop from Sony?

NINTENDO
FINAL GRADE: F
Now, after the Microsoft and Sony press conferences, it was obvious that Nintendo needed to step up their game. They not only failed to do that, but failed to really show anything at all. Their three biggest announcements -- Metroid Freedom Force, AC: Amiibo Festival, and Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes, seemed to just be budget substitutes of games people actually wanted (Metroid Prime 4, AC: Wii-U, and, well, The Legend of Zelda). The fire continued to burn after the conference, as numerous Nintendo execs tried hard to claim that nothing was wrong with the conference, as well as rumors that Nintendo was planning on abandoning the Wii-U in favor of the NX. If right now is a great time to be a PS4 owner, it must really suck to be a Wii-U owner.

SQUARE ENIX
FINAL GRADE: A
What a stellar performance from a company many thought was in a pretty dark place. A series of brand new announcements, such as the FF7 remake, Nier 2, and a brand new mainline JRPG IP, were placed along very impressive looking gameplay demos for games that had already been announced, primarily for Kingdom Hearts 3. Oh, and let's not forget Eidos Interactive, Square Enix's western wing -- Just Cause 3 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided were looking very impressive, and a brand new Hitman was announced, which seemed to hearken back to Blood Money rather than the not as well received Absolution. Definitely signs of a turn around for Square Enix, which will hopefully continue well into the future.

PC GAMING SHOW
FINAL GRADE: F
Oh, yeah! Almost forgot this happened. To be honest, this was just as bad as I was expecting it to be. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate PC gaming -- but just like every other system, I'd like to see some exclusives coming out for it. In the total two hours of the show, we got about 3 of those (2 of which I can't even remember the names of). The majority of the rest of the show primarily dealt with ports of console games, long boring talks with AMD execs, and DLC or expansion content for games that had already been released. Throughout the entirety of E3 however, games were being announced for the system -- except they would be released months, maybe even years after they had already come out on consoles, which seems to have been the case already for the PC.

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