E3 Predictions - Post yours here! - IGN's released - June 15-17 2010

Jan 29, 2009
7,187
PS3

IGN PlayStation Executive Editor Greg Miller: What's Sony going to be doing at E3 this year? A lot, but the basic plan is a three-pronged attack focusing on what makes the PlayStation 3 the platform gamers need for the next year – PlayStation Move, sequels, and 3D gaming.

Now, the PlayStation Move – Sony's motion controller -- officially debuted a few months back at the Game Developers Conference, and the reception was a bit mixed. The mainstream press immediately latched onto it and images of fit women holding the Move and "sub-controller" as if they were a bow and arrow filled nightly news shows across our land. However, the gaming press was a bit rougher on the product. Folks complained that this was just the Wii HD and worried about the level of quality Move games would bring to the table.

The tech was cool, but could it be fun?

E3 is Sony's first real chance to fire back and answer the critics, and they're going to be on the offensive. Either the company is going to come out swinging with fantastic looking PlayStation Move titles that get jaded folks excited to play with motion, or it will show more titles in the casual/party genre the Move is already targeting. To date, the Move hasn't seemed like Sony's main focus, so it's completely possible that the bigwigs will come out at E3 and just show simple games that use the Move – entrench their system as the HD Wii and target that market.

If Sony's only plan for E3 was to focus on the Move and its casual titles, there'd be riots in the streets (surrounding my house), but that's not an issue. See, Sony's already stacking the deck with the likes of Killzone 3, LittleBigPlanet 2, and God of War: Ghost of Sparta. While we're not one-hundred percent sure what Sony will be showing in the way of the PlayStation Move, we do know that some big titles are getting big sequels and they're going to be at the show. Sony has a balanced attack – innovative stuff to catch eyes, and proven franchises fans want. Toss in our hopes for news on a new Twisted Metal, Patapon and Infamous, and only good things can come. At E3, Sony's going to leverage itself as the company that has something for everyone – and it just might.

The final piece of this Crash Bandicoot-born Triforce? 3D gaming. For years now, Sony's been showcasing its games at trade shows in 3D. Now that Avatar's in the history books, 3D-capable TVs are rolling into stores, and a slew of PS3 games are ready to rock, this is the show where 3D is demonstrated to the masses. E3 2010 is when 3D gaming becomes a reality. With goofy looking glasses on, Jack Tretton or Kevin Butler will address the crowd and let them know that the era of staring at flat screens is over and the era of having mud in your face and smoke in the air is upon us. Sony will show its biggest titles, tell you that they'll be in 3D, and try its best to make you want them.

Will it work? Well, there are some things even we can't predict, but no matter what it should be an interesting show. Sony has a lot of projects in the works, and if they all come to fruition during the same week, the PlayStation brand could steal E3 2010.

Xbox 360

Every year, the videogame industry invades Los Angeles, Calif., for an intense week of revelation, spectacle and deal-making. It's called the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and it's the most important week of the gaming calendar. Publishers, developers and console makers come to the show to reveal their upcoming hardware and software lineups to critics, retailers, distributors, each other and ultimately, you.

Some of the announcements planned for E3 2010 are already known quantities. We've already put together our Nintendo E3 2010 Preview that goes in-depth with the biggest games, and we're rolling out platform-focused E3 previews for Sony, Microsoft and PC over the remaining few weeks before the big show. But what about the industry's larger trends and ideas?

Although announcements of individual games are usually the highlights of E3 expos, the events also provide clues to the industry's overall direction. E3 2010 will be no different. More than any other period in the last two decades, gaming is in a state of upheaval. The Nintendo Wii shocked the industry by putting interface (rather than graphics or computing power) at the heart of the console war's battlefield. Only now are Nintendo's closest competitors poised to catch up. Meanwhile, social networking sites like Facebook have broadened the definition of 'gamer' even further, adding another front on which interactive entertainment companies must fight.

It's against this backdrop of competition, innovation and disruption that E3 2010 will unfold June 14-17. To find out how each of the major gaming platforms will respond to the challenges ahead, we've gathered IGN's four executive editors in charge of Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and PC gaming coverage to break it all down.
Join Jessica Chobot for a closer look at IGN's E3 Trends & Predictions.


IGN Xbox Executive Editor Erik Brudvig: Microsoft has to pull off something rather tricky this E3. The company first and foremost has to sell this funky camera-majiggy called Project Natal to the masses. The slippery part comes in doing that without making the experienced gamer turn up its collective nose and walk away. It's a balancing act –one that has no historical blue print to follow – which involves simultaneously selling Project Natal and the Xbox 360 to the casual audience while convincing those who love shooters and mature rated games that Xbox 360 is still their go-to console.

We already know a lot of what Microsoft plans to do. The company has announced that it will kick off E3 with a big Cirque du Soleil extravaganza called "Experience Project Natal." That's where Microsoft hopes to get buzz with the mainstream media. The company is going for a reaction along the lines of "Wow, look at this! It's a motion controller without the controller! Plus bright lights and people doing flips!"

Those that follow the gaming scene closely will indeed roll their eyes at those theatrics, which is probably why Microsoft chose to kick E3 off with such a show. The rest of the week will be spent selling Project Natal and the system as a whole to the core gamer. Fable III, Gears of War 3, Halo: Reach and whatever else Microsoft has up its sleeve will be the big selling points once the show proper kicks off. There probably won't be too many more big announcements, outside of perhaps the usual reveal of some exclusive downloadable content. It doesn't seem all that likely that Microsoft would want to overshadow its big trio of games and Project Natal with some other announcement.

Even so, it will be hard for anybody to look at Microsoft's E3 showing and not think about Project Natal. We'll see new games from Microsoft (hopefully including the announcement of what Rare is up to), but perhaps even more exciting is that the flood of third-party announcements will finally arrive. Console exclusives are few and far between these days, but Project Natal might change that. Everything we hear indicates that Microsoft is preventing all third-party publishers from revealing their Natal lineups until the big unveil at E3. We should learn the full launch lineup and exactly how much it will cost. There will be at least a dozen game announcements surrounding the camera system, some of which will probably be exclusive to Xbox 360.

Even if none of the games interest you, there will be reasons to look at Project Natal. Microsoft is sure to demo the new Xbox 360 dashboard that will arrive alongside Natal. How exciting the interface changes are will be a big indicator of things to come. If Microsoft can't integrate Natal directly into the console's operating system, it'll be a hard sell.

Nintendo

IGN Nintendo Executive Editor Craig Harris: Nintendo always has a lot to live up to at E3. The company has attended each and every one of the events over the past decade (and beyond, when Summer CES was the in-show for videogame companies), and its press conference always seems to mark the beginning of the expo, not just for attendees but for the rest of the gaming population looking in during this huge week of gaming news.

Over those past few years, the E3 press conference has turned into a bit of a battle between the big guys, with the industry folk using it as a gauge for a company's worth during the show. Nintendo's had its ups and downs at each and every press conference, learning what can wow and what can bore. Some press conferences have floored us (remember the Legend of Zelda trailer?) and others have baffled us (ten minutes on Pac-Man Vs.?). What's important: the company has our undivided attention for 90 minutes, and those minutes can make or break the rest of the week for the company.

I'll never be sure until my butt's sitting in my seat at the Nokia Theater on Tuesday, June 15th, but I'm confident that Nintendo's showing at this year's E3 will be something special.

The company is no longer sitting on top of the world in a comfortable position: both Sony and Microsoft are rapidly gaining market share on Nintendo's Wii. It can no longer depend on the expanded market to bail it out this time because the company's biggest competitors have learned Nintendo's game. Even Apple has stepped it up in the portable market with the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, encroaching dangerously on Nintendo's aging Nintendo DS portable.

Sony and Microsoft will focus on showing off their new expanded audience-focus motion controls, and unless Nintendo's got something new up its sleeve in this department there's no way the company can compete -- Nintendo's already done all it can with the Wii remote, and now it's time to show why Wii is still the system to own. Nintendo will clearly come out with guns blazing with familiar brands like Zelda and Pikmin, properties that will be immediately familiar to anyone who's held a controller in their mitts in the past decade or so. There will be a massive push to show Nintendo is still the system to go to for some key first-party titles.

But it's the battle for handheld dominance that I think will get much of the attention, and that's where I think a lot of the focus will be for Nintendo: the portable market.

Earlier this year Nintendo made a short, quick announcement that it will be producing a brand new, Nintendo DSi-compatible handheld system codenamed 3DS that will feature stereoscopic 3D but without the need for glasses. Up to this point any real 3D effect required the use of eyewear to produce the 3D illusion. It's a big deal to remove the one hassle everyone has with the 3D trend, and if the company has a technology that actually works without the eyewear I think it will make a huge splash at its E3 debut.

If anything, the 3D capability is that one real "hook" that Nintendo will have over the iPhone. With the movie theaters embracing 3D technology and the consumer electronics market scrambling to catch up in this department, this desire for stereoscopic experiences (whether it's a true evolution or just a gimmick) will bleed into this year's E3.

But the big problem: how do you show off its 3D capabilities, not just to a room full of journalists, but to the millions watching its debut through internet streams and live broadcasts? That's something I still haven't figured out, and I don't think Nintendo could survive on a simple "trust us, it works!" disclaimer.

If it's anything like the debut of the Nintendo DS at E3 2004, Nintendo will most likely have to wait until the first day of the show to give people a true experience with the system. When the company introduced its Nintendo DS six years ago, it had set up an enormous room full of very early prototype systems with many, many tech demos. There wasn't a single finished game in the bunch, and it was clear that Nintendo was showing off the system well before it was close to being finished.

I get the feeling that 3DS is in a similar position: at the time of the Nintendo DS, Sony was coming in with a competitor to its Game Boy Advance, the PSP, that could truly kick its butt. The Nintendo DS was there to let a bit of air out of its tires whether it was ready for prime time or not. The same can be said for 3DS: its announcement a couple of months ago seemed premature, but its showing at E3 will be used to strengthen its position in the handheld department.

But only a fraction of gamers will be in attendance at E3 -- it is an industry-exclusive event, after all. So the 3DS will have to be something enormously special outside of its stereoscopic 3D capabilities to pique the interest of gamers who want something more than "ooh neat, depth!" in their portable experiences.

That's why I believe the 3DS will be a significant upgrade over the Nintendo DS hardware. I'm talking impressive hardware capabilities that put it on par with the Wii and beyond, and an online experience that'll bring Nintendo close to today's expected standards. Apple has shown that its iPhone -- a persistently online handheld -- has the ability to make developers millions of dollars in software sales, and Nintendo would be foolish not to be looking at ways for its system to remain online even when it's not in a Wi-Fi capable zone. Kindle's partnership with Sprint for free cellular connectivity is a great example of a strategy Nintendo could adopt for 3DS.

Nintendo will make every opportunity to ensure that this year's E3 will be one to remember, with a showing that proves it wants to stay on top of its game.
 
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Caliblue15's Predictions:

Xbox 360 -

FFXIII Versus goes Multiplatform
Natal $150 or more
Goldeneye 007 Release date for Xbox Live
New Exclusive from RARE

PS3

Move $100 for bundle (gamers with eye already get screwed)
Killzone 3
LittleBigPlanet 2
Twisted Metal
Uncharted 3 Teaser
Agent
The Agency
PSP2
PSN Premium $50 a year or $8 a month

Nintendo

New Zelda
Metroid Other M
Another Party Game w/ Vitality sensor
Wii HD
3DS
 
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Xbox 360 -

FFXIII Versus goes Multiplatform
Natal $99
MGS4 port
Halo 4
L.A. Noir multiplatform

PS3

Move $100
Move Game list and compatible game list
Killzone 3
LittleBigPlanet 2
Twisted Metal
Uncharted 3 Teaser
The Agency
PSN Premium $50+ a year
Cloud service separate from PSN Premium
GOW 4 :D
Syphon Filter PS3
Epic set to release PS3 Games

Nintendo

New Zelda Teaser Trailer
Metroid Other M
Wii 2
3DS (The new PSP killer)
 
Xbox 360 -

FFXIII Versus goes Multiplatform
Natal $99
MGS4 port
Halo 4
L.A. Noir multiplatform

PS3

Move $100
Move Game list and compatible game list
Killzone 3
LittleBigPlanet 2
Twisted Metal
Uncharted 3 Teaser
The Agency
PSN Premium $50+ a year
Cloud service separate from PSN Premium
GOW 4 :D
Syphon Filter PS3
Epic set to release PS3 Games

Nintendo

New Zelda Teaser Trailer
Metroid Other M
Wii 2
3DS (The new PSP killer)

For some reason I'm skeptical about that. I really think that mgs4 will remain exclusive.

That being said I agree with you on everything else. Hopefully we'll see a little bit of Metal Gear Rising or whatever it's called.

Also I'm praying for a KH3 announcement.
 
For some reason I'm skeptical about that. I really think that mgs4 will remain exclusive.

That being said I agree with you on everything else. Hopefully we'll see a little bit of Metal Gear Rising or whatever it's called.

Also I'm praying for a KH3 announcement.

That was just to fuel the fire lol

I want to see something about Rising as well.

As far as KH3, I've given up already. The man behind the last 2 doesn't want to do it so whatever. I'll just finish the DS KH and the up and coming PSP version.
 
That was just to fuel the fire lol

I want to see something about Rising as well.

As far as KH3, I've given up already. The man behind the last 2 doesn't want to do it so whatever. I'll just finish the DS KH and the up and coming PSP version.

really, that sucks. I didn't know that. I could only imagine how great KH on ps3 would be.