It’s June! Which means it’s the summer and most of you are
spending your days thinking about ice lollies and BBQ’s. My mind however is a
very different curiosity, my mind is obsessed with games. “Isn’t it always joe?”
Well yeah, but you see… June is the month of E3.
E3 is short for Electronic Entertainment Expo. Basically the
majority of everyone who makes games gets together in a big old convention
centre and shows of what they’re working on. There are shiny press conferences
with audiences whooping and cheering, followed by days of journos playing games
and reporting back to insatiable geeks like me.
I bloody love it. The point of this blog is to tell you why,
and to give a bit of pre-warning for the barrage of gaming talk I’ll be doing for
the next week. So the fun part… press conferences! Yes, really.
The main events are those from the console makers,
Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. They show demos of games they’ve announced and
they announce a bunch of new games. They’re extended adverts for why you should
find space under the TV for their wizardly boxes. Or if your mind works like
half of the gaming fans online then it’s a giant boxing match, a battle to the death
and the most important event of the year…
The PlayStation 4 is outselling the Xbox One and generally
dominating the market. There’s loads of reasons why but E3 2013 is one of the
most memorable. Xbox One’s initial unveiling was a fricking disaster, telling people
they’d always have to be online to play their games and couldn’t share the
discs they’d bought. They were on the ropes and despite spending their E3 show
showing an impressive array of games they were doomed to fail. Sony’s show was
longer and in a way less impressive. Until the big moment… On stage they
announced it’d have none of the crap restrictions Xbox had and it’d be £80
cheaper. And with that it was pretty much all over, PS4 was going to be the
winner that Christmas.
On the other end of the scale you have Nintendo, a company who
are about as predictable as the lottery numbers. Two years ago they had one of
my favourite E3 shows, announcing Splatoon and showing us the first glimpse of
a new Zelda. I was giddy. Last year they showed Mario Tennis and the most horrific
looking Metroid 3ds game. I was angry, I was emotional and to be honest I don’t
want to talk about it anymore as I’m still not over it.
This year Nintendo aren’t even doing a show, instead they’re
doing a stream of that same new Zelda (which we’ve barely seen since the announcement
2 years ago) I was gutted when they first announced this plan but I eventually
calmed down and I’m OK with it now. You see at least this way I can’t be disappointed.
Every year I get hyped and caught up in the rumours and pipe dreams of what
fans expect to see. Then I don’t see it and lose all ability to have a rational
response. You could barely look at me after last year’s Nintendo debacle, you’d
have thought someone had abused my very being. It all seems silly now, well it
probably does to you. To me it’s very very important, alright??
It’s the week before E3 and the fun’s already starting. Leaks
are happening and games are getting announced now to try and claim a moment in the
limelight before the chaos begins. A lot of my spare time will be spent on
Twitter and lurking NeoGaf as half of E3 is really just rumouring and hoping
and bitching away on the internet. I doubt I’ve sold it to any of you not in to
games and to be honest I’m struggling to think of an alternative in other
hobbies. Imagine every film studio got together over one weekend and announced 100
new films (but you’d also have to care if Disney and WB were competeing)
Imagine the football transfer window was condensed in to two days and you had the
manager take to a stage to announce who they had signed. There’s no equivalent.
And it’s brilliant.
Next week: Expect at least two blogs, maybe more going over the
shows and all the mayhem. I’ve booked days off work for this!! My eyes will
hurt by the end of it and I’ll probably be sick due to eating too many Doritos
and Haribo but I do not care. Hype!
One last bit: I’ve left out this beauty of an E3 memory.
Enjoy
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