This E3 is arguably the strongest in years. Just about every platform holder or publisher made a few announcements that turned heads or left jaws on the floor. Fallout 4, Backwards Compatibility, The Last Guardian and Final Fantasy VII being remade; this is the stuff of dreams for many a gamer. It would be unfair to say anybody really won E3. There were, however, some big losers.
And they belong. Respectively, to each of the 3 console publishers. Nintendo’s E3 direct presentation was a mash of sad trailers for games, punctuated every so often with a dash of hilarious puppetry.
There were some new games announced for the 3DS which largely got mixed reception – but the stark lack of anything new and exciting for the Wii U apart from StarFox Zero indicates that Nintendo is letting go of the system. In fact, it’s getting typical end of life stuff, by way of Mario Tennis. The lack of anything about the new Zelda and the Reggie saying to wait for NX news next year suggests that Nintendo’s moving resources to its new platform.
Loathe as I am to admit it, it looks like Wii U is on life support, with just a few titles left to hold it up.
In similar company is the PlayStation Vita. Once touted as a revolution in handheld gaming, Sony’s fantastic, but underutilised handheld is becoming, more and more, good for little else but on-the-go indies and remote play. Speaking to IGN, Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida confirmed confirmed that the company was pretty much done making its own big games for the Vita.
“To be honest, I wouldn’t say we will have big AAA Vita games from first party,” Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida told IGN.
“Instead of spending lots of money making big Killzone games on Vita, those large studios are focusing on PS4,” he continued. “But we know that the smaller games work very well on PS Vita because it doesn’t require that PS4 tech to make the game fun.”
The Vita? It’s dead. Also dead? Microsoft’s Kinect.
Where the company once tried to convince us that Kinect was integral to the Xbox One and wouldn’t even function without it, Microsoft has since ripped the motion-sensing peripheral out of the core bundle. At its E3 conference, not a single mention was made of the device, nor of any games that supported it. While it’s still useful enough as a way to control the Xbox One and its soon-to-be-redesigned menus – especially with Cortana coming to the Xbox One – Kinect itself, as a gaming peripheral, is dead.
What do you think? Is there any life left in these platforms – or is it time for each of these companies to move on and admit defeat?
Last Updated: June 17, 2015
Geoffrey Tim
June 17, 2015 at 17:04
don’t dead open inside? I don;t get it.
Aries
June 17, 2015 at 18:09
Read it like that as well at first
The King Shopper
June 17, 2015 at 18:58
IN PAINS ? ,?ANnxiety?, have SLEEP issues? we got good ?PainsPILLS? n good?BUD n Mary. j ? n the ?Purple/leann? TXT us????) 464-60???. Low key delvry. Real shit. no bs. rgggfgg
The King Shopper
June 17, 2015 at 18:58
IN PAINS ? ,?ANnxiety?, have SLEEP issues? we got good ?PainsPILLS? n good?BUD n Mary. j ? n the ?Purple/leann? TXT us????) 464-60???. Low key delvry. Real shit. no bs.fghjk
007Fusiion .
June 17, 2015 at 20:48
If there are two separate things, you usually read them as separate blocks. Like a book page.
PrinceAshitaka
June 19, 2015 at 08:51
It’s like a metaphor and stuff. when you read it backwards it says the same thing. That’s a metaphor, right?
Brady miaau
June 17, 2015 at 17:46
Xbox One: Just make a mini kinect, microphone only. Would suit me.
Gareth Runnalls
June 17, 2015 at 17:47
You mean, like a headset or something? 😛
Brady miaau
June 18, 2015 at 09:41
Yes. Erm. Yes.
You mean my headset will work for that? Hmm. But not practical enough. I like sitting on the couch and instructing the Xbox.
Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)
June 17, 2015 at 19:14
Poor Kinect… may she rest in peace!
Brady miaau
June 18, 2015 at 09:41
it. No female voice option to respond.
Hello dave.
fred
June 17, 2015 at 20:47
Is that the end of Sony portable gaming systems? AAA Game development is just too costly to develop for a single platform. And where was Quantic Dream ( the heavy rain developers) and Sony santa monica (the God of War people)?
Irene E. Zimmerman
June 17, 2015 at 22:11
<-+++ my best friend's step-aunt makes $62 hourly on the laptop. She has been out of work for 7 months but last month her pay was $18355 just working on the laptop for a few hours. She actually started four months ago and pretty much immediately began to make more than $542… Every week.
Rock789
June 18, 2015 at 09:07
Sad to see these things seemingly on their way out. All 3 are great pieces of tech…
But yeah, with the Kinect, for instance, it’s never made me go “Wow! I gotta have that!”. Hence why I never got it for my 360 and then bought a Kinect-less XB1 at launch. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve used both and they’re pretty cool. But I’ve always said that I’ll only get it if they can convince me to buy it with something that makes me go WOW. Seems I’m not the only one who felt that way.
MarkRKuhn
June 18, 2015 at 09:52
Your first choice lazygamer Find Here
Kensei Seraph - Terran Ghost
June 18, 2015 at 13:45
Raise your hand if you are surprised at the death of Kinect?
What, no one raised there hand?
[sarcasm]Who would have expected that?[/sarcasm]
evilash78
June 18, 2015 at 17:49
I know its a trendy bandwagon to hate on the kinect, but it is actually a great piece of tech. Its a real shame all you dorrito eating, soda guzzling gamers out there never looked into xbox fitness.