We’re on the ground at E3 – here’s everything we’re expecting from gaming’s biggest show.
E3 is the world’s biggest gaming show. Every June, the video game development community and press gather in Los Angeles to learn about what the next year has in store for the world of video games. This year 15,000 members of the public will be joining the party too.
It’s an exciting show. The big players in the industry, from Sony to Microsoft and Nintendo to Ubisoft, all compete to get the biggest headlines by saving their biggest announcements for the show.
In previous years we’ ve seen the announcement of new consoles and new games, and with two new consoles being released this year (the Nintendo Switch and Microsoft’s Project Scorpio) , we’ re expecting the major publishers to have something big lined up for the show.
But what exactly is coming? Read on for our top predictions for this year’s show, and if you’ re interested in reading about what went down at E3s past, check out our pages on E3 2016 and E3 2015 .
It’s a big year for Nintendo and according to Nintendo of America’s president Reggie Fils-Aime the company is planning a “big” E3 to reflect this.
But apparently it’s not quite a big enough year for Nintendo to host a traditional on-stage press conference. Nintendo hasn’t had one of these since 2012, instead reaching out to fans directly with Nintendo Direct-style videos and Treehouse livestreams.
This year will be no different. Nintendo’s E3 show will kick off with a livestream at 9am (PT) on Tuesday June 13th which will apparently focus on Super Mario Odyssey, but will also include details about this year’s other Nintendo Switch games.
This will be followed by another more long-form ‘Nintendo Treehouse’ livestream. Last year this focussed overwhelmingly on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but this year Nintendo hasn’t yet announced which games in particular it will be streaming. Super Mario Odyssey, ARMS and Splatoon 2 seem like safe bets, but we’ve got our fingers crossed for a surprise Pokemon Stars reveal.
On the show floor (which opens at noon PT on June 13) Super Mario Odyssey will be playable as well as “other games for Nintendo Switch.” There’s a lot we don’t yet know about Nintendo’s presentation this year, but Nintendo has said that its planning on revealing more closer to the event.
It’s been confirmed that there’ll be a Splatoon 2 tournament at the Nintendo booth this year. Though it’s not certain what form the tournament will take it’s highly likely that it’ll be somewhat similar to the Super Smash Bros tournament that was held at E3 in 2014.
With lots to be confirmed about Nintendo’s lineup, we have a pretty long wish-list of games we’d like to see Nintendo announce.
Every year we cross our fingers and hope that Retro Studios will be allowed to make another Metroid Prime game, or that Nintendo might see fit to resurrect F-Zero for another outing, but it’s probably more likely that the company will be hoping to launch a couple of all new franchises with its new console.
Sony’s conference is scheduled to take place this year on June 12 at 6pm PT, 9pm ET, and at 2am on June 13 BST.
Sony has developed a knack for showstopping E3 presentations in recent years. Two years ago it stole the show by announcing a long-anticipated remake of Final Fantasy 7 alongside Shenmue 3, and last year it let games such as God of War and Horizon: Zero Dawn speak for themselves alongside an appearance from legendary game designer Hideo Kojima.
It then went on to be a big hardware year for Sony. It launched a refresh of the PS4’s hardware with the PS4 slim, a new 4K console in the form of the PS4 Pro, and the first ever console virtual reality headset, the PlayStation VR.
We have some ideas for what we’d like to see from Sony this year but we think virtual reality will be a big focus for Sony at this year’s event. Its VR headset is out in the wild now, and people need big meaty gaming experiences to convince them it’s a worthwhile investment.
Announced at last year’s presentation, Star Wars VR ended up being an amazing experience whose biggest problem was its length. We’ d love to see a full-length Star Wars X-Wing game that can be played in virtual reality in its entirety announced at this year’s show.
We also saw the announcement of a new Spider-Man game developed by Ratchet and Clank studio Insomniac games last year, and with Spider-Man: Homecoming arriving on the big screen a month after E3 in July it’s highly likely that Sony will want to capitalise on the excitement with another announcement.
Otherwise we expect Sony to be pretty much business as usual at this year’s show. It’s developed a comfortable lead over Microsoft in hardware sales, and it’s unlikely to want to upset this too much.
