For me, the Sony and MS conference are virtually identical with the content they provided. I thought that their 3rd party content was great in both, and as a gamer who doesn't care about MS vs. Sony or Xbox vs. Playstation, I liked seeing extended gameplay segments of 3rd party games in their conferences even though they are not exclusives (AC:U for MS and Batman for Sony). MS relied too heavily on CG of future releases, though I thought Sony gaffed by having a few really boring, pointless and poorly constructed demonstrations... the 6 - 8 minute LBP3 demonstration, with unbalanced audio, and basically nothing but like "well, okay, it's LBP..." was weird. Followed up by the no-audio awkward presentation of the game where you can "become a magnificent dragon" or whatever he said.
I thought Sony picked it back up once the Bloodborn trailer dropped, which was a huge -- though expected -- announcement. THey lost the momentum with the TV stuff but picked it back up towards the end. Ending on Uncharted 4 was a great way to do it. Sony had more exciting long term releases (Bloodborn, Uncharted 4), but those are offset by the lack of anything in 2014. Sony's two biggest games for the next 6 months were there two games in 2013... GTAV and the Last of Us, and that's disappointing. GTAV was a wow moment for me because I didn't think Rockstar would make an announcement at E3, although it was tempured because we knew within 20 minutes that it would also be on X1 and PC (arguably a bigger impact is the PC release).
There were two big press conferences surprises for me: Ubisoft and Nintendo. Ubi's was so polished, showed a lot of promise, revealed interesting things, and showed perspectives of games that I was not expecting to be interested in. I went into the show with little interest in Far Cry 4, Assassins Creed: Unit, and the Crew. I went to bed on Monday with those being some of my most anticipate games of the year now. I've been cynical about Ubisoft for some time now, but they really knocked it out of the park with their pressers & their contributions to MS/Sony's presser.
And then, Nintendo. Nintendo probably sold me on a Wii U today, and they showed that they're committed to this platform and not giving up on it. I was expecting a half-hearted throw-in-the-towel of crap releases from Nintendo, and they showed that they're making a major push for the Wii U over the next year. I don't think that it'll save the platform, but it was without a doubt the best press conference.
Only one real stinker this year: EA. I watched their press conference and said to myself, "What have they been working on since June of 2013." The company has had no major releases in the year and they do not seem any closer with any of their major IPs... What we saw of Mirrors Edge was basically what we saw a year ago, but longer with a few more details. It was still just a teaser. The new EA-Big-like game on motorbikes and whatever sounds great, but... it was less than a tech demo. NHL looked great, the most impressive game, but it's an annualized sports franchise and while I like NHL and tollerate Madden, most do not. Otherwise, no major announcements or anything for any of their major franchises, no Mass Effect re-release, something that I was expecting and was really looking forward to. On top of all of that, their press conference felt poorly planned -- 10 minute developer diaries on shit nobody cares ago -- and then poorly executed, like with the stupid smoke announcement at the end of it... Like... what are you thinking EA.
For me:
1. Nintendo
2. Ubisoft
3a. MS
3b. Sony
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10. EA
