Sony and Microsoft both held strong press conferences at E3 2014, with Sony continuing on from the tour de force that it displayed for the PS4 last year, and Microsoft attempting to right the wrongs of two years worth of bad will it had generated thanks to the shaky start of the Xbox One’s life cycle.
Both press conferences had their highs and lows, but which company made the strongest impact at the Los Angeles Convention center? We’ve dissected them both in order to find out.
Remakes/Remastered Games
Remakes/remastered games were a strong talking point during both press conferences, with E3’s worst-kept secret Halo: The Master Chief Collection being the biggest of the lot.
While Sony used its press conference to announce that The Last of Us: Remastered Edition would be making its way to the PS4 next month and that Grand Theft Auto V would be coming to the PS4, Xbox One and PC this Fall, Microsoft’s announcement that Halo‘s 1 through 4 will be coming to the Xbox One with updated graphics was what many have deemed the highlight of MS’s entire press conference.
While seeing Halo 2 with pristine high-definition visuals (and with its original gameplay in-tact) rekindled those joyous memories of playing Zombies on Lockout on the original Xbox, that the most high-profile announcement Microsoft had to offer was a collection of remakes was a little underwhelming. Though there’s no doubt that The Master Chief Collection will prove to be popular and will introduce many to what is arguably the best multiplayer first-person shooter of all time, E3 is a great platform for console manufacturers to show us the new gaming experiences they’ll be offering us over the next couple of years, not rebuffed editions of old experiences.
Aside from The Last of Us, Sony’s other major exclusive remastered game announcement was Grim Fandango, which will be coming to both the PS4 and PS Vita. News that Tim Schafer’s classic late ’90s adventure game would be receiving a re-release and a makeover was met with rapturous applause from the audience, though it’s impossible to compare it to the popularity of Microsoft’s biggest franchise.
Hardware Announcements
E3 2014 will go down in history as one of the final nails in the Kinect’s coffin. The motion-sensor device was almost completely absent from Microsoft’s presentation, with only Dance Central Spotlight and Disney’s Fantasia: Music Evolved making use of the hardware. Even then, though, the presenters shied away from explicitly referring to the Kinect, with Microsoft’s emphasis on making its E3 2014 appearance “all about the games” meaning that the device was thrown overboard without a life jacket.
While Sony also showed a keen emphasis on games during its presentation, it also announced PlayStation TV, a device that will let users stream PS4, PS Vita and older PlayStation titles to any TV. The device made its debut in Japan last year under the name PSVita TV, though will now be launching in the Fall in North America and Europe for $99 (£60). Sony will also be demonstrating its Project Morpheus virtual reality headset during E3, though it was absent from its press conference.
Exclusives
Sony closed out its press conference with a trailer for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, which from first impressions looks like it’s set to be a darker entry in the series. The teaser it showed didn’t have the “wow” factor of the Uncharted 2 announcement, which managed to floor everyone in attendance at the Los Angeles Convention center when it debuted, but that hardly matters. It’s a new Uncharted game, and that’s all you need to know to be excited about it.
On the other hand, Microsoft closed out its show with Crackdown 3, the next iteration in a series which has thus far featured one good game and one mediocre game. Needless to say, this being Microsoft’s final announced game was a little disappointing, but it did have a few more exclusives up its sleeve in the form of Platinum Games’ Scalebound and a more in-depth look at Sunset Overdrive, which continues to impress with its frenetic open-world gameplay.
Sony also unveiled LittleBigPlanet 3, complete with a stage demo from a few Media Molecule developers who struggled to contain the chaos that typically ensues during an LBP multiplayer session. LBP3 introduces a few new characters into the mix, each boasting different abilities that will ensure level creators have a lot of new ways to experiment with the stages they create.
All in all, we weren’t caught off-guard by any of the exclusives shown by either party. Uncharted 4 was a no-brainer, Crackdown 3 had already been hinted at and, while Scalebound certainly boasting an intriguing trailer, we can’t make a judgment call on it until we see footage that isn’t pre-rendered CG. In fact, LittleBigPlanet 3 was the only exclusive title to feature an onstage demonstration, and didn’t rely on a glamorous, expensive trailer to court our approval. Good show, Media Molecule.
Indie Titles
Both Microsoft and Sony dedicated a chunk of their respective presentations to upcoming indie games, with the likes of Hotline Miami 2, Broforce and The Talos Principle receiving some love from Sony, and Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Mighty No. 9 and White Night featuring in the Xbox One’s indie game montage.
Microsoft definitely put the bigger emphasis on its courting of indie developers, though, with Moon Studios’ Ori and the Blood Forest and LIMBO developer Playdead’s Inside both being among the most intriguing titles debuted in both press conferences. Both games feature unique visual styles that peaked the interest of those who aren’t interested in watching white people shoot each other a la Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare/Tom Clancy’s The Division, and look set to follow in the footsteps of Super Meat Boy, Fez and the like as the next wave of hugely successful, bank-busting indie titles.
Multi-Platform Games
Both Sony and Microsoft were guilty of pushing that contemptuous business practice of releasing multi-platform games “exclusively” first on their consoles to the forefront of their presentations. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will yet again see its DLC being released first on the Xbox One, while Destiny will enter a PS4 exclusive beta on July 17th, a PS4 exclusive alpha later this week and will also be featured in an upcoming bundle that will boast a white PS4. Unfortunately, Destiny still looks like it’s going to be an underwhelming next venture for Halo creators Bungie, and its trailer that opened Sony’s press conference showed nothing to sway the opinions of those who expect that it will disappoint. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain also had a great new trailer featured during Sony’s presentation, though Konami had accidentally posted it on its official YouTube account prior to E3, so that bubble had unfortunately already been burst.
Assassin’s Creed Unity, which showed up during Microsoft’s presentation, adds four player co-op gameplay into the mix, which looks like it could be a lot of fun. The gameplay demo shown indicated how stealthy multiplayer gameplay can be incorporated into the typically single-player series, and from what was shown it looked like it worked wonderfully. The Division‘s hugely impressive visuals were also shown off in more detail, as was its squad-based tactical gameplay. Rise of the Tomb Raider was also announced, though in the form of yet another CG trailer, with no gameplay footage being revealed.
All in all, it was a relatively impressive showing for multi-platform titles, with there being a reasonable amount to get excited for on each platform.
The Show Stealer
Among all the big-budget first-person shooters and new iterations in hugely popular series, the biggest talking point to come from the day zero E3 presentations was indie title No Man’s Sky.
Developed by Hello Games, the few showings we’ve received of this game thus far have all been mind-blowing, and its E3 2014 trailer only served to make those watching even more excited by the prospect of finally getting our hands on this open-world space exploration title.
The trailer shown during Sony’s conference revealed more of its explorative gameplay, along with some towering dinosaur-esque creatures and floating jellyfish. Like all the best games, it’s a title that we didn’t even know we wanted before we were shown it. Now we can’t think of playing anything else.
And the Winner is…
Microsoft tried its absolute best to put the Xbox One in the spotlight, and while it was great to see the company finally putting the emphasis back on games, what it had to show wasn’t all that exciting. It was a remarkably safe presentation from a company prone to making risky, divisive announcements, but it was also one that didn’t really feature anything that will get people buying an Xbox One.
Considering Microsoft’s press conference was essentially game after game after game, Sony’s presentation suffered from a few more dry spells, though what it did offer was more appealing. While we’d have looked to have seen more of Uncharted 4, the presentation of LittleBigPlanet 3 was great, No Man’s Sky sent jaws falling to the floor and Project Beast, the new game from Souls series creators From Software, was given a dark and frankly grotesque trailer that grabbed everyone’s attention.
While E3 2014 doesn’t mark a victory for Sony as triumphant as the one it enjoyed at E3 2013, it certainly got the better of Microsoft once again this year.
