2015-06-15

At E3, console video games still rule the roost.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, aka E3, is the biggest and most important video-game industry event of the year. It’s E3 2015 next week, so the subject for this weekend’s Inbox was a pretty obvious one, although actually narrowing down choices to the reasonable and plausible was less easy.

Sales of the most recent generation of console systems — the Microsoft Xbox One, Nintendo Wii U and Sony PlayStation 4 — and games for them are projected to top $15 billion in 2015, DFC Intelligence estimates. And we’ll learn more about eagerly awaited independent titles like “No Man’s Sky.” But, unlike previous E3 shows, we’ll see more attention directed at virtual reality. The obvious choices like Fallout 4 and Uncharted 4 were amongst the most popular, but there was also a lot of interest in Nintendo’s line-up (including demands for more New 3DS exclusives) and a surprising number of calls for Dead Space 4, even though the developer is currently making a new Star Wars game. I was looking forward to hearing more about Halo 5 but a load of info has been released anyway that makes the game sound fantastic (returning character and Blue Team has me very happy) but I think it is getting to the stage where too much will be revealed that will spoil the game for me so I will avoid all Halo 5 news from now on until release. So here’s your one-stop guide to when the major events will take place, where you can see them and what games are confirmed to be making an appearance (be sure to scroll down for speculation on unannounced games).

Facebook’s Oculus has teamed with Microsoft’s Xbox group to bring games to the Rift headset, which goes on sale in the first quarter of next year. (We should be getting hands-on time with the new headset at the show.) Sony is moving forward with Project Morpheus, the headset it’s developing for the PlayStation 4. New game announcements will come thick and fast at the Microsoft event, with Xbox boss Phil Spencer last month tweeting his intention to make this E3 more about Xbox-exclusive games and new franchises than the company has in the past. I’m also hoping for more DLC for Mario Kart 8 and more Smash Bros. information (mainly the tourney mode that was announced last year.) The main thing I’m hoping for though is for more exclusives to be announced for the New 3DS, because at the minute I feel it’s not worth buying as there’s only one exclusive so far. But they still account for only one-fourth of the revenue of traditional video games, at a projected $4 billion. “Everyone talks about mobile and portable games, but console seems to continue to remain the dominant platform,” said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Baird Equity Research.

Curiously, HTC and Valve, who have been collaborating on the Vive virtual reality headset built for PC gaming, aren’t showing off their VR push with a booth or press event at E3. Bethesda Game Studios may have started development on the game as early as 2012, and speculation about Fallout 4 began almost as soon as Fallout 3 launched in 2008! Beyond games, Microsoft will be talking up the gaming capabilities of Windows 10 on both PC and Xbox One, as well as positioning Xbox as the go-to video streaming and TV box for living rooms. I know some are against remakes but it’s good for people like myself who didn’t own a PlayStation 3 and as such missed out on quite a few exclusives. The desire to play new releases on the latest systems in the highest fidelity has driven a faster sales uptick for the latest systems than the previous generation, says Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities.


When it comes to VR, don’t count out gaming-PC juggernaut Razer, which is evangelizing an open-source VR approach that could bring together many smaller providers of hardware and software. It is still a goliath —last year saw an eight year attendance high of 48,900 to see 200 exhibitors— so any shift for its sheer mass is going to take some time.


There are a few call backs to previous Fallout titles to be found in the teaser trailer, including Feral Ghouls, some sort of Deathclaw, and a German Shepherd, which looks set to be the Dogmeat of Fallout 4. Nintendo’s Wii U, released in 2012 — a year before the other two — has struggled selling 10 million. “Microsoft and Sony are clearly in a good place, Nintendo is not,” Pachter said. Nintendo has confirmed that the hugely anticipated Legend of Zelda game for Wii U – announced with a full trailer last E3 and further detailed since – will not be appearing this year. Since it overlays imagery on the visible world around you, it’s not virtual reality, but augmented reality—aka “mixed reality.” We’ve seen HoloLens shown off at Microsoft press events and developer conferences, and we’ve heard executives promise that, among uses such as productivity and communication, it could be used for gaming.


Nintendo hopes that the arrival of the recently released, family-friendly combat game Splatoon and upcoming games such as Star Fox will jump-start the Wii U. Nintendo were probably the first to move, boiling down their traditional press conference to a timed video release of their E3 ‘Nintendo Direct’ and streaming events from across the week in their ‘Nintendo Treehouse’.

As the newer game systems find their way into more homes, game publishers are more willing to move beyond regular reliable releases and try something new. The unexpected star last year was From Software’s Bloodborne, which released in March to near universal acclaim and sales which far exceeded expectations. As always, E3 will be used to update us on the blockbuster franchises of the gaming world—familiar brands that have each reaped billions in revenue over the years. The Japanese company perhaps realised first that the press attention usually lavished on console manufacturers has spread just as much to third-party publishers so decided to transmit directly to fans.

Ubisoft will have Tom Clancy’s The Division, an online, open-world, role-playing game due early next year, prominent at E3. “There are actually some pretty compelling new IP (intellectual properties),” Pachter said. Leaked ahead of time (much like the Gears of War remake this year) Halo: The Master Chief Collection was announced, containing all 4 numbered entries in the series remastered for Xbox One. The company’s announcements will happen via the Nintendo Digital Event, which begins on Wednesday at 2am. e3.nintendo.com A new Rockstar game – The creators of Grand Theft Auto have famously never much cared for E3, but they are due to start talking about their next game: they always work on one major game at a time, and GTAV has been out for almost two years. Microsoft’s other big title, first announced at the launch of Xbox One, was Insomniac games’ Sunset Overdrive, which was released in October 2014 to generally positive reviews.

It will effectively kick-start E3 2015 with its press conference on Sunday 15 June at 6:30pm (2:30am UK time) and, much like Nintendo, will be broadcasting live interviews and gameplay demonstrations throughout the week. The Last Guardian – Follow-up to the critical darlings Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, the story of a boy and his giant dragon-puppy has been teased for at least six years.

Many fans have given up hope that it will ever be released, but The Guardian has reignited that hope by saying they “have it on very good authority” that 2015 is the year. The first game was the complete opposite of the stodgy ‘do what we say exactly or we’ll give you big red crosses’ mission design of so many other games these days. Though GameStop has built a business on consumers trading in games for new purchases and selling those used games to others, there’s a growing digital distribution network. An update on Hideki Kamiya’s Scalebound and the new Crackdown would be welcome, but Remedy’s Quantum Break is reportedly waiting until Gamescom to show its hand.

Minecraft megaton – Microsoft made headlines with its purchase of the insanely popular Minecraft last year, but has since refrained from any big changes or announcements. From a hardware perspective, Microsoft has already revealed a 1TB Xbox One model, which is perhaps not the sexiest news for a lavish press conference. I have high hopes that Capcom will have grown a pair since Homogeneous Game 6 and have created a proper Resi title again, focused on horror, exploration and a sense of vulnerability. Sony built the PS4’s lead over the Xbox One by focusing on games, while Microsoft aimed to make its system a whole-home entertainment and communication center.

At least two Apple retail store workers complained directly to chief executive Tim Cook that the company’s policy of checking retail employees’ bags as a security precaution was embarrassing and demeaning, according to a court filing recently made public. It’s such a sales disappointment that the gaming industry is already wondering if Nintendo’s next console, currently known as the NX, will have what it takes to recapture gamers. VR is expected to be one of the major trends of this year’s E3 —with the Oculus Rift and HTC Valve Vive also expected to have a large presence on the show floor— and while it might be tricky to show it off on stage, you can expect Sony to be giving Morpheus a push as its 2016 release nears. One worker, whose name was blacked out of the court filing, told Cook in a 2012 message that Apple managers “are required to treat ‘valued’ employees as criminals”. All many fans need to see is Uncharted 4 and they’ll be happy – and that’s definitely going to be on show considering the poster that dominates one side of the Los Angeles Convention Centre.

In the lawsuit, plaintiffs Amanda Friekin and Dean Pelle alleged that “screenings” or bag searches, designed to discourage theft, are conducted every time sales reps leave the store, including for meal breaks. Also expect a big deal to be made of Gran Turismo 7 and Hello Games’ supremely ambitious space exploration sim No Man’s Sky, which Sony has snagged as a PS4 exclusive. Back to reality, I’m all about the fours: Fallout 4, Doom 4, Mass Effect 4, and er… hearing vague rumours of Sony releasing PlayStation 4 games at some point this gen. A US Supreme Court ruling last December, in a case involving an Amazon.com warehouse contractor, handed a victory to employers, ruling that companies do not have to pay employees for the time they spend undergoing security checks at the end of their shifts. Looking to address the criticisms levelled at Far Cry 3’s ‘white saviour’ narrative, Far Cry 4 had you play as a native liberator of the fictional country of Kyrat.

The Supreme Court found that because the screening process is not a “principal activity” of the workers’ jobs under a federal labour law it is not subject to compensation. In the 2012 email to Cook, with a subject line “Fearless Feedback from Apple Retail Specialist”, the employee said Apple’s policy implies the company does not trust its workers. “These procedures are often performed in front of gawking customers,” the employee wrote, adding that workers deserve to be treated with the same respect that Apple shows customers.

The French gaming giant was confident in The Crew’s potential, but since its release in December 2014, its middling scores and sales have suggested their faith was misplaced. PlayStation has a tremendous stable of developers under its wing that have yet to show their PS4 hand: Media Molecule, Quantic Dream, Guerrilla Games. McNealy, founder of Digital World Research. “Despite all the noise and fanfare about mobile gaming, console gaming is not going away anytime soon,” he said, “in the U.S. or anywhere else around the world.”

It also said an emergency exit in the store is blocked by Apple products. “If it is simply a deterrent there has to be a more intelligent and respectful way to approach,” wrote Denise Young Smith, Apple’s vice president of human resources. Announced in 2013, The Division has been delayed twice and is slated to be released in 2016 whereas the less ambitious but no-less exciting Rainbow Six Siege should see the light of day in October this year. At the time it was released the graphics were amazing (if a little grey) and the cover-based shooting was tremendous fun and the best the genre had seen. The content – mostly behind the scenes dev diaries – just about stretched across the whole hour Though they had two of the biggest releases of the last year to show off in Dragon Age: Inquisition and Battlefield: Hardline alongside their bread and butter sports releases, the rest of their line-up was hardly stellar. As for new titles, rumours are circulating that Plants v Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 will appear and even though DICE are rather busy with Star Wars and Mirror’s Edge, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the announcement of a new Battlefield.

Ubi’s tendency to keep one big announcement in the can for their conference finale has won them plenty of attention in recent years, you wouldn’t expect that to change. I’ve never played any of those games but two things stand out 1) Lucas being released as DLC and 2) Nintendo have mentioned the 20th anniversary quite a bit. Warner Bros. will give Batman: Arkham Knight one last E3 outing before its release the following week, but expect it to focus more on Mad Max and Lego Dimensions.

Namco Bandai are set to unveil Dark Souls III, while Konami will be pushing Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 and Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. 2K Games will be showing off XCOM 2 and Gearbox’s Battleborn, though expect the publisher to have something to announce during the show. All the instruments in there are well loved, battered into submission by the music game boom of the mid-2000s, starting with Guitar Hero and culminating in the frankly glorious Rock Band 3.

Having played their game with the benefit of a few years hindsight, the developers say that their main takeaway was simply how fun the game that they made was. Gone is the ‘Pro’ mode which valiantly attempted to teach players how to noodle on a real guitar (a market covered perfectly well by Ubisoft’s Rocksmith) and open up more technicalities in drum play. The complex tangle of RB3’s campaign and challenges has been turned into a more ‘gamey’ type of role-play, tasking you with building fans and renown across the world, choosing between corporate shows for cash and underground gigs for credo.

Talented vocalists now have the chance to riff on their favourite songs without having to exactly match pitch and lyrics, as long as your warble is in tune you will still rack up the points. More collectively, Harmonix are looking to keep players playing, rather than spending ten minutes between songs scrolling through the setlist and arguing over whether to play Blondie or Pearl Jam next. Upcoming rival Guitar Hero Live is taking an admirable gamble with its Spotify style streaming, reactive live-action crowd and redesigned guitar, but Rock Band, at its core, is very much the same game it has always been. Perhaps even more importantly, nearly all of the songs you downloaded to your PlayStation or Xbox Live account will be available to you on the new consoles. The grand idea is that Harmonix will only be releasing this one game for this console generation, and will continue to add to Rock Band 4 via software updates and downloadable content.

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