Get your controllers ready because it’s the biggest video game show of the year.
I’m not expecting to see any new Xboxes or PlayStations. But I’m counting on E3 to showcase enough new video games and gadgets arriving in the next year to keep avid gamers, including me, excited about what’s coming next.
Over 65,000 people are expected to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles this week, a convention that plays host to the biggest announcements coming out of the $108 billion-a-year video game industry .
Many of the 2.6 billion gamers around the world will be watching, as will the 15,000 excited fans who paid $249 each to attend the show. It’s the second year in a row E3 is open to the public (before then, only industry insiders and press could attend). And while having so many fans in the Los Angeles Convention Center means there will probably be plenty of long lines to play new game demos — and lots of people dressing up as their favorite game characters — that’s far from the main event.
The real action happens before the “expo” floor opens, during the press-only media days . This year, everything starts Saturday, as Electronic Arts kicks off three days of nonstop announcements, with news from game makers Bethesda and Ubisoft, and console makers Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo .
On the console front, Microsoft’s long-rumored Xbox VR headset is unlikely to make a showing, and the company already announced its Xbox Adaptive Controller for disabled gamers, in May. Meanwhile, Sony said it’s holding off on a new PlayStation console for a few more years to ” prepare the next step.” And Nintendo’s hit Switch console just came out last year .
So what does that mean for E3 2018?
Fans are especially looking forward to details on Kingdom Hearts 3, the latest in the Disney character adventure series starring beloved characters like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Another crowd-pleaser will likely be Sony’s The Last of Us: Part 2, a sequel to the hit 2013 postapocalyptic zombie survival game. Bethesda Softworks, meanwhile, has already teased Fallout 76, the latest in its postapocalyptic shooting series.
Electronic Arts used its press conference kicking off E3 on Saturday to announce that its next big war fighting game, Battlefield 5, will have a “royale” mode, taking on the hit online game Fortnite from Epic Games. This genre of games refers to dropping about 100 players into a game where they battle against one another, Hunger Games-style, until the last player is standing.
Some people criticized the company for quickly following its competitors to offer the game mode, but Patrick Söderlund, EA’s head of design, said many fans had been asking for it.
“That’s why you’ll see Activision and us and others try to come up with our formula for what this means,” he said.
The company also announced a new Star Wars game coming late next year and that its Anthem online epic will be released Feb. 22,2019. And EA showed off its efforts to build a cloud gaming service, which it’s testing with an eye toward a release “soon.”
Each E3 has its share of hype, but this show seems to have a bit more than normal as the press conference weekend gets underway. Games like Red Dead Redemption 2, the highly-anticipated sequel to Rockstar Games’ hit 2010 western drama, have been gathering more views on YouTube than many movie trailers.
Meanwhile, I’ll be watching to see if Spider-Man from Insomnia Games can be the next character to break the curse of bad superhero video games. I also can’t wait to see what Nintendo is going to do next with its hit Super Smash Bros. fighting game series.
And those are just the games we know about.
Rumors are swirling around a new Halo space shooting epic from Microsoft, and that Fortnite will be coming to Nintendo’s Switch .
After the media days, the convention center opens. The expo and its surrounding theaters and event halls promise 3,250 games, gadgets and toys spread across 410,000 square feet of exhibit space, with multimillion-dollar booths filled with props and life-size re-creations of game worlds — like when Electronic Arts brought in a bunch of re-created Star Wars props, or when you could walk through Nintendo’s Metro Kingdom from Super Mario Odyssey.
There are also going to be two e-sports pavilions, hosting some of the world’s best gamers playing against one another, plus celebrity sightings (it’s always hush-hush, but Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood is scheduled to show off a VR horror game called Transference that he helped make).
We’re also being promised a blimp flying over the convention center, displaying selfies that people take on the ground below. Because, why not?
“It’s the largest stage in the world for video games,” said Mike Gallagher, the head of the Entertainment Software Association trade group that puts on E3.
With this many excited fans tuning in for nearly a week of nonstop gaming news, there tends to be some drama, too.
The most common issue to pop up is GamerGate, a backlash against feminist media critics and game reviewers that was ostensibly about media ethics but turned into an internet movement that attacked women, game developers and journalists perceived as threatening game culture. Though it largely fizzled out a few years ago, flare-ups still happen.
Electronic Arts got caught up in the drama in May when it announced its Battlefield 5 wartime shooting game. The latest installment in the 16-year old series is set in World War II and prominently features women soldiers in its marketing — a move some fans complained was inaccurate despite the fact that many women fought and died in the war.
Even so, cultural battles likely won’t steal too much attention away from the larger show, which in the past two years shifted from being an industry-only event to a fan event.
There will be e-sports competitions and a festival devoted to Fortnite. There’ll be T-shirts, toys and tchotchkes celebrating games, too.
E3 organizers are also trying to make the famously long lines to play new games more appealing by offering us things to do while we wait — like more game stations and food options. The show will also stay open later in the day to help accommodate everyone attending.
