So, what's going to happen at the E3 2011? Some of my predictions are here
Wii2 for Nintendo, NGP for Sony, no new console for Microsoft.
Why? - It was announced all around the media. The specs of Nintendo's 7.5th generation console have been wildly speculated, there is gossip about crazy-ass touchscreen controllers and what not. Sony's plans are even more open. Microsoft has had a huge Kinect launch this year, and does not plan to put out a new console for at least 2 or 3 years, so nothing new on that front will be shown on this year's E3. They may give PC and Windows Phone 7 some love, but Xbox360 is going to be the main focus of their appearance on the E3.
Expect Nintendo's console to be available in the West no sooner than march-april 2012 (with a possible holiday 2011 launch in Japan).
Anything else we can expect? - Sony will probably talk a lot more about Xperia Play than we expect. The system is probably going to branch from PSP, supporting all the PSP games, having some exclusives on its own, but not being able to tap into NGP library. That is something Sony must spend some time explaining, and they are not known for cutting boring explanations that almost no one is interested about from their conferences.
GTA5 is going to hit shelves much sooner than you expect it
Why? - The current contract between Take2 and Rockstar Games expires mid February 2012, and there has been no GTA game since that contract has been signed. Red Dead and LA Noire are great titles, but shareholders would never let T2 sign a deal with R* without explicitly insuring at least one GTA game. Expect it to be announced for January or February.
Anything else you are sure about 3rd party devs? - Hitman5 is going to be there. The franchise is currently in a position where it's status and the status of it's creators would really benefit from signing a deal to be exclusive for one platform, but IO will probably push it on all fronts, since they haven't really made a single genuine 7th gen game that has sold well. Ubisoft is probably going to announce a shitload of Kinect stuff, along with a new Assassin's Creed, which is probably going to be also available for Nintendo's new console.
Activision is going to announce at least one, and possibly two Call of Duty games. New games from Bungie and Infinity Ward will be shown. If that is not the case - something in development is going awfully wrong. New Insomniac game is going to be shown, and it would not be unexpected if Microsoft decides to give it a place on its own presser.
New Halo - not this year. Probably May-June 2012.
Why? - MS has shifted the release date of the Gears of War to a part of the year usually filled with Halo. That probably means that we will not see a new Halo game this year. They also need to put another Halo as soon as possible, and it would be harmful to wait for September or November of 2012 to do that. May-June is the second most popular part of the year for the big M, so it won't be unexpected to see a new Halo announced for that window.
"Windows gaming technologies" from Microsoft. Probably Kinect for Windows.
Why? - If you dig through a pile of press material that MS sends to its partners, you can see, sorted as an "future or inactive logo", something called "Windows gaming technologies". Nobody has talked about it yet, but my guess is that there will be word on it on the E3.
It will probably be just a bunch of old Xbox360 exclusives released for Windows7 and probably an announcement that Kinect is coming to Win, but it can, by a wild guess, also mean a first step for MS moving gaming to its cloud; Microsoft has made huge investments to its cloud infrastructure, and it's moving a lot of its apps to the cloud, so they must be at least thinking of moving their gaming services up. If they are planning of cloud gaming soon, Halo3 running on Windows Azure in thin air could be a nice first step.
New God of War game announced
Why? - Sony likes to announce games years in advance (MGS games, FF13, Killzone2, The Last Guardian...) and it is hard to believe that a new GOW game is not going to come in the next couple of years, especially when MS is going to take a stab at the genre with Project Kingdoms.
New multiplatform games from both Bungie and Insomniac finally shown
A new Half-Life
Why? - I'll skip announcing all the probable new iterations in big franchises - it is almost certain that we will see a new Halo, CoD, Assassin's Creed, Hitman, Need for Speed, Medal of Honor, Doom (with Rage out in September, ID will need something else to talk about), Forza, Uncharted, Resident Evil and many more; probably even a new Fable, Gran Turismo and Tomb Raider. The only folks that we are never sure about what their next move is going to be are those guys from Valve - but they have come to a point where they have to show at least a bit of Half-Life (episode) three. Fans will be outraged if they get (even if they are nevertheless going to buy whatever Valve has to sell them) a new Portal or Left4Dead announced instead. And Valve cares about fans.
A new IP from Microsoft
Why? - Xbox is losing the war of exclusives - not as much on the field as in the media - Sony has less huge exclusives, but they talk about them years and years in advance, supporting their lineup with second-tier exclusive games (Socom, Motorstorm, Heroes on the Move...). MS is not doing that - if a game flops like Too Human did, they bury it right away, giving it no chance for a franchise to carve a niche. That approach is OK only if you plan to replace that IP with a new one, and that is where MS is getting a bit lazy. E3 2011 is a great time for them to show that they are capable of creating new, amazing IPs.
MS owns Firebird Studios, a team that is rumored to be making a new gaming IP since 2009, as well as their newly (re)formed Vancouver and London studios. Chances are we are going to see something truly new from at least one of them this year. They are also closely tied in with Scottish Ruffian Games and we have no idea what those guys are currently working on.
A new studio buyout from MS
With Bungie out and Lionhead not doing so block-bustingly well, Microsoft may even announce that they are buying a new, established studio. When choosing which one to buy, they will be looking for three things - a studio that you can rely on to bring good games on time, a studio that brought consistently good games, but lacked huge money support to push those games to quadruple-A status and, possibly, a studio that can create technology that will make an Xbox360 games look at least as good as the next batch of PS3 games. The last one is a hard one - MS would probably gladly lay their hands on Epic, but that is too huge of a bite even for them, so they are probably left with Crytek on that one. As for the reliable game-makers, two names really pop out - Obsidian and Gearbox. Both studios have had experience cooperating with MS, and both are known to make surprisingly good experiences compared to the budget they were given. It is a wild guess, but if Microsoft is going to buy a studio to replace Bungie in their first party AAA lineup, Crytek, Obsidian, Gearbox (and maybe Volition) are the best possible picks.
With Wii out of the picture, Wii2 still far ahead and Sony tangled in their portable marketing and PSN fiasco, MS is going to make a huge push to establish itself as a kingpin of 7th gen gaming, and a new studio buyout is a possible move in that direction.
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| Image courtesy of IGN |
Expect Nintendo's console to be available in the West no sooner than march-april 2012 (with a possible holiday 2011 launch in Japan).
Anything else we can expect? - Sony will probably talk a lot more about Xperia Play than we expect. The system is probably going to branch from PSP, supporting all the PSP games, having some exclusives on its own, but not being able to tap into NGP library. That is something Sony must spend some time explaining, and they are not known for cutting boring explanations that almost no one is interested about from their conferences.
Why? - The current contract between Take2 and Rockstar Games expires mid February 2012, and there has been no GTA game since that contract has been signed. Red Dead and LA Noire are great titles, but shareholders would never let T2 sign a deal with R* without explicitly insuring at least one GTA game. Expect it to be announced for January or February.
Anything else you are sure about 3rd party devs? - Hitman5 is going to be there. The franchise is currently in a position where it's status and the status of it's creators would really benefit from signing a deal to be exclusive for one platform, but IO will probably push it on all fronts, since they haven't really made a single genuine 7th gen game that has sold well. Ubisoft is probably going to announce a shitload of Kinect stuff, along with a new Assassin's Creed, which is probably going to be also available for Nintendo's new console.
Activision is going to announce at least one, and possibly two Call of Duty games. New games from Bungie and Infinity Ward will be shown. If that is not the case - something in development is going awfully wrong. New Insomniac game is going to be shown, and it would not be unexpected if Microsoft decides to give it a place on its own presser.
Why? - MS has shifted the release date of the Gears of War to a part of the year usually filled with Halo. That probably means that we will not see a new Halo game this year. They also need to put another Halo as soon as possible, and it would be harmful to wait for September or November of 2012 to do that. May-June is the second most popular part of the year for the big M, so it won't be unexpected to see a new Halo announced for that window.
Why? - If you dig through a pile of press material that MS sends to its partners, you can see, sorted as an "future or inactive logo", something called "Windows gaming technologies". Nobody has talked about it yet, but my guess is that there will be word on it on the E3.
It will probably be just a bunch of old Xbox360 exclusives released for Windows7 and probably an announcement that Kinect is coming to Win, but it can, by a wild guess, also mean a first step for MS moving gaming to its cloud; Microsoft has made huge investments to its cloud infrastructure, and it's moving a lot of its apps to the cloud, so they must be at least thinking of moving their gaming services up. If they are planning of cloud gaming soon, Halo3 running on Windows Azure in thin air could be a nice first step.
New God of War game announcedWhy? - Sony likes to announce games years in advance (MGS games, FF13, Killzone2, The Last Guardian...) and it is hard to believe that a new GOW game is not going to come in the next couple of years, especially when MS is going to take a stab at the genre with Project Kingdoms.
New multiplatform games from both Bungie and Insomniac finally shownWhy? - Those games are in development for more than a year, and we have not heard a word about them. With Activision finally accepting to take a bigger part in this year's E3, Bungie's new game seems like a perfect way to open a conference with a bang.
Why? - I'll skip announcing all the probable new iterations in big franchises - it is almost certain that we will see a new Halo, CoD, Assassin's Creed, Hitman, Need for Speed, Medal of Honor, Doom (with Rage out in September, ID will need something else to talk about), Forza, Uncharted, Resident Evil and many more; probably even a new Fable, Gran Turismo and Tomb Raider. The only folks that we are never sure about what their next move is going to be are those guys from Valve - but they have come to a point where they have to show at least a bit of Half-Life (episode) three. Fans will be outraged if they get (even if they are nevertheless going to buy whatever Valve has to sell them) a new Portal or Left4Dead announced instead. And Valve cares about fans.
Why? - Xbox is losing the war of exclusives - not as much on the field as in the media - Sony has less huge exclusives, but they talk about them years and years in advance, supporting their lineup with second-tier exclusive games (Socom, Motorstorm, Heroes on the Move...). MS is not doing that - if a game flops like Too Human did, they bury it right away, giving it no chance for a franchise to carve a niche. That approach is OK only if you plan to replace that IP with a new one, and that is where MS is getting a bit lazy. E3 2011 is a great time for them to show that they are capable of creating new, amazing IPs.
MS owns Firebird Studios, a team that is rumored to be making a new gaming IP since 2009, as well as their newly (re)formed Vancouver and London studios. Chances are we are going to see something truly new from at least one of them this year. They are also closely tied in with Scottish Ruffian Games and we have no idea what those guys are currently working on.
Sony's PSP phones not only a PSP RePlayStation, but also a new platform
Why? - Xperia Play - PSP phone from Sony Ericsson is, if some developers' contracts are cited right, going to become not only an Android phone with an ability to play existing PSP games, but also a gaming platform on its own. That means it will get its own exclusives (apart from Android and PSP games), even if those games are just a platform for Sony's developers and partners to familiarize with touch interfaces. Look for Sony announcing at least one Xperia Play exclusive game.
With Bungie out and Lionhead not doing so block-bustingly well, Microsoft may even announce that they are buying a new, established studio. When choosing which one to buy, they will be looking for three things - a studio that you can rely on to bring good games on time, a studio that brought consistently good games, but lacked huge money support to push those games to quadruple-A status and, possibly, a studio that can create technology that will make an Xbox360 games look at least as good as the next batch of PS3 games. The last one is a hard one - MS would probably gladly lay their hands on Epic, but that is too huge of a bite even for them, so they are probably left with Crytek on that one. As for the reliable game-makers, two names really pop out - Obsidian and Gearbox. Both studios have had experience cooperating with MS, and both are known to make surprisingly good experiences compared to the budget they were given. It is a wild guess, but if Microsoft is going to buy a studio to replace Bungie in their first party AAA lineup, Crytek, Obsidian, Gearbox (and maybe Volition) are the best possible picks.
With Wii out of the picture, Wii2 still far ahead and Sony tangled in their portable marketing and PSN fiasco, MS is going to make a huge push to establish itself as a kingpin of 7th gen gaming, and a new studio buyout is a possible move in that direction.
