VIDEO The Wild, the Innocent & the Schedule Shuffle: E3 2017

This is a month earlier than the previous incarnation of this thread. There's a reason for that, as today we got the first major announcement of E3 2017.

Specifically, E3 2017 will be the first one to be open to the public.

Yes, as of Monday, February 13, you too can be among the lucky 15000 to pay the ridiculous price of US $250 for the privilege of sitting through marketing pressers, sampling carefully curated vertical slices of games still in development, and being surrounded by games journalists who, finally able to meet you in person after years of your complaining about how [insert game] only received a mere [insert score] when it clearly deserved a 10/10, will probably beat you to death with a cardboard cut out of Master Chief at the slightest provocation.

In accordance with the dread Weed3 prophecies, the show has changed forever, and there can almost certainly be no going back. With that in mind, some thoughts for discussion:

• Will public access directly conflict with similar events staged by EA and the like? Will those companies decide to come back, or are these last ditch death-throes to coast the event through its contract with the LA Convention Center?
• Will the publishers still attending E3 alter their conferences to accommodate the public? Will this finally be the death of those obnoxious paid cheering sections in favor of organic sycophantic fan cheering?
• How will Scorpio affect MS's conference, and will Sony do anything to address it?
• Will Nintendo have more of a presence to try and push the Switch?
• Is there really any reason for consumers to still watch this damn thing other than snarky Internet personality streams and Giant Bomb's awesome panel shows? (No.)

 

I think so. They will want to use all possible avenues to generate buzz in the early launch months.

 

There goes the neighborhood.

 

Microsoft has moved its conference time to Sunday afternoon.

They also released an exclusive preview on YouTube:

 

Fully Expecting Microsoft to put out the first trailer for Halo 6 which won't have anything to do with the game and the announcement of the next Tomb raider game.

 

Less than a week to go! Here's the conference scheduling, starting on Saturday because **** your weekend.

• EA, Saturday, June 10 at 12 PM PT
• Microsoft, Sunday, June 11 at 2 PM PT
• Bethesda, Sunday, June 11 at 9 PM PT
• PC Gaming Show, Monday, June 12 at 10 AM PT
• Ubisoft, Monday, June 12 at 1 PM PT
• Sony, Monday, June 12 at 6 PM PT
• Nintendo, Tuesday, June 13th at 9 AM PT

Note that Devolver Digital had announced an intent to hold a conference of some sort, but that has apparently been canceled"made private." Note also that, like last year, technically the EA and Nintendo events aren't proper "E3 press conferences" owing to EA holding a concurrent dedicated conference and Nintendo preferring to pre-record segments so they can include weird comedy bits.

 

EA is also has a post-conference live stream, which, if last year was any indication, might be more entertaining than the conference proper for reasons they don't want it to be.

 

I suppose as thread creator I should've bumped this thing for live talkback on EA but, honestly, there are only so many variations of "kill me" that one can type.

 

MFW the stream opened on Madden...

Spoiler

A Way Out looked pretty cool though. I'm all in for a game built entirely around split-screen coop.

 

It's probably my fault that I expected more from BioWare than another generic space marine sci-fi game. A Way Out looks like an interesting experiment but I'm not sure I'll take to it. Battlefront II looks great (and I have a massive crush on Janina Gavankar).

 

A Way Out was the only thing that interested me since it's from the creators of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (which everyone should play if you haven't already).

 

I liked A Way Out, and I think the new Need for Speed has some potential, but I was more struck by the fact that the conference itself was so poorly put together it was sapping my interest in everything they showed off. Ubisoft is really going to have to pull out all of the stops if they want to be Worst in Show this year.

Microsoft is potentially going to have to work around an awkwardly high Scorpio price per His Holiness the Dorito Pope, so today should be fun.

 

I was hoping for news of ME story DLC, but after Andromeda's reception (and other troubling news story) guess not. I'm sad but not surprised. And its too early for the next Dragon Age (and who knows about the Mass Effect franchise).

So Microsoft is the next conference/first big one. Now just to see how much Scorpio costs. Logically it should be $400 to match the PS4 Pro. If they actually do announce it at $500... well, the reactions should be interesting. If it is $500, not sure if Microsoft is either that crazy or that desperate and can't afford to price it any lower. Like if they took another swing with forcing everyone to use Kinect. Perhaps a repeat of the early PS4 vs. XB1 console war?

They already have a temporary XB1S $50 price drop going until next week. Maybe that's intended to soften the blow and make their regular console look better? "Hey everyone, don't bother with the $500 Scorpio, just get the regular S!". Or this could all be a trick/rumor and it'll launch at $400. If the price is under $400, that would be a huge shock.

I wish I could watch it live, but I'll be out and guess I'll just have to catch up on the news later. I'm not much of an Xbox fan anyway, I honestly can't think of any exclusives they have that would interest me. Well, Halo Wars 2 is already out (and is on PC too) but doesn't sound as good as the first one and I think they already said no Halo 6. Which is too bad, Halo 6 would sure sell a lot of Scorpio units.

 

Honestly if it really is $500 ain't nothing selling a lot of Scorpio units, boy howdy.

 

Microsoft has apparently decided they will either win E3 or die horribly while trying.

 

'Most powerful console' don't mean crap without the games? So what are they and which are exclusive? Which ones say 'buy the system'?

 

FOUR HUNDRED NINETY NINE US DOLLARS

An extremely solid conference but they have nothing in the way of actual exclusives that makes me want to shell that out, holy hell.

 

£500!? No way. And yes, the way things are going we will have $-£ parity! It's near enough that on trades already.

 

You could tell Spencer and/or someone in marketing was not loving that price point because he barreled through it. I mean yikes. Yikes.

Shadow of War looks so good, though. I'm definitely going to pick that up (on my PS4 (because it's not exclusive (because there are like three exclusives))).

Edit: To clarify Sony is just as bad about the fake "exclusive" thing but they're not trying to sell me on a really expensive new system.

 

The Xbox exclusive lineup just doesn't compete with PlayStation. Halo lost its appeal because 343i doesn't have a clue what to do with John-117 and Cortana based on how Halo 5 was received. Forza is a solid alternative to Gran Turismo, but driving games aren't system sellers. Gears of War might be their most competitive franchise, but it isn't enough. ReCore didn't seem to be particularly groundbreaking, especially in comparison to Horizon Zero Dawn. State of Decay 2 is the one of the few things on the horizon that might be competitive.

 

It did nothing for me (ohhhhh Vienna).

Anthem looked pretty and as a Bioware mark and a fan of Destiny I sit nicely in the middle of that venn diagram. No way on God's green Earth I'm getting a Scorpio though, I'd rather update my PC.

 

Same problem, really: cool game, not an XboneX (or even Xbone) exclusive.

 

True, although this year the lack of actual exclusives is pretty notable given that Microsoft's competition have had fierce starts to the year. Sony have had Gravity Rush 2, Nioh, Yakuza 0's western release, Horizon: Zero Dawn and Nier Automata (I know that's on PC too, but given that all of Xbox One's titles now come to Windows 10 I'll count it too.). Nintendo have launched one of the best received video games in history, released a new console and we're on the verge of seeing the Switch's true exclusives about to start firing up.

Microsoft on the other hand have had Halo Wars 2 and... well that's about it really. There's very little on show that I think would make people go "I need to get an Xbox One." It makes the lack of exclusives on offer today a little more egregious.

I also laughed whenever they started talking about the integrity of a game developer's artistry and vision. Tell that to the Scalebound team Microsoft!

It still wasn't a terrible conference. It was worth it for a new Metro game if nothing else. And if the Scorpio (I'm not calling it an Xbox One X) can truly handle Metro Exodus at 4K then that just goes to show what a nifty piece of kit it is. The Metro games are juggernauts that can make even high end gaming PCs chug, and this looked pretty impressive even by the franchise's standards.

Although you can be as powerful as you want, $500 is still too much for a console. That's the kind of pricing that shot the PS3 in the foot.

 

We can all just get second jobs though.