E3 2013 has been all the buzz around Cable TV, Video Game Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Vine and more as Microsoft and Sony dropped their console megatons while publishers like EA, Ubisoft and Activision also put on some major displays as well as many others.
Today we like to discuss our biggest surprises of the show as well as some of the biggest letdowns.
Top 5 Surprises:
- Sony’s PlayStation 4 reveal was not only a megaton with regards to price, at $399 the PS4 is 100 Dollars cheaper than Microsoft’s Xbox One, but also with regards to DRM, Required Internet check-ins and Used Game restrictions as it pretty much reversed the Xbox One policies that Microsoft announced quietly last week.
- Mad Max is back! Also during Sony’s press conference Avalanche, the makers of Just Cause, announced an open world game set in the Mad Max universe which none of us expect. Most surprisingly the game is an original story and not a movie tie in for the PS4 and Xbox One.
- The Crew by Ubisoft is an open world racing game on a massive scale with tons of customization for on road and off road events, tons of multiplayer and social interactivity as well as a cool concept that should drive the MMO style driving genre forward.
- Ubisoft’s second new game announcement was Tom Clancy’s ‘The Division’ which is a persistent and open world third person shooter that allows for coop and P2P multiplayer in the same instance as groups of players get to explore the world, complete objectives and come across other groups of players. The Division looks like a great prospect and is set in a post pandemic world.
- EA, a publisher that is usually scrutinized for being mass market and money hungry, did not only show off a solid line up of games including Battlefield 4’s 64 player multiplayer mode, but also announced that a Mirror’s Edge prequel is in development at DICE. Sadly the game won’t come out ‘until it’s ready’ but hey, we’ll take it. Oh and Star Wars!
Top 5 Disappointments:
- Sony had done the almost unthinkable and announced its price of $399 being 100 Dollars less than Xbox One’s $499 price tag that was announced the same day. Microsoft not only missed the pricing opportunity but also missed the time to clear up any uncertainty about the used games, 24 hour online check ins and other DRM concerns. Showing good games on stage was one thing but almost none of it was gameplay.
- Nintendo – the publisher didn’t manage to breath fresh air into the WiiU at its Nintendo Direct. Not only was the live stream botched and a true E3 press conference was absent but Nintendo’s games only got the core excited – not much else.
- Need for Speed Rivals was shown on the EA stage but we kept scratching our heads, do we still want a new Need for Speed game every year? Was this truly fresh enough? We have our doubts and question if the high resolution visuals are enough to make this worth a buy.
- Where is Fallout 4? While Bethesda showed us some Elder Scrolls Online footage and also announced that it is coming to consoles but we did not hear about Fallout 4, the game many of us desperately want to play.
- What about the Vita? Yes Sony had an excellent press conference as it is our #1 Surprise above but what about the PlayStation Vita? We wanted to see some more game announcements about the machine we plopped 250 to 300 bucks on last year.
