NIDZUMI+

I don’t think anyone could complain about a shortage of announcements at this years E3. From motion controllers to never before seen exclusives, we’ve had it all. But how much of what we expected to see actually happened?

Microsoft

Lost & The Damned was one of the most important parts of previous Microsoft conferences and they don’t even mention the 2nd episodic pack for GTAIV. The Ballard of Gay Tony might not sound like the most family friendly orientated piece of DLC on the market but Microsoft you paid ridiculous fees for this exclusive.

Elsewhere I think a lack of a real success story for XNA and the Community Games project meant that they only way we could hear about this would be with numbers and charts. That definitely wasn’t the focus of Microsoft’s presser. Along with nothing Viva Pinata, Gears of War or anything that Rare might be working on. I’m also pleased surprised to say that I was correct about a lack of Zune at the press event.

Nintendo

Where to start? There where a lot of unknowns regarding Nintendo’s presser but they definitely delivered on a few key titles. Still where was Miyamoto and Pikmin 3? Last year he subtly announced that Pikmin 3 was in development and it doesn’t even get mentioned. It would have been great to see a new IP from Nintendo but again…nothing.

WiiWare and Virtual Console for DSiWare weren’t mentioned, leaving more holes in Nintendo’s downloadable services. Talking of the DSi we really didn’t see anything that made me sit up and take notice. Before this a lot of DS Lite owners didn’t feel the need for a new DS and after this conference nothing has changed.

Sony

We predicted that Sony would either announce a price drop or a slim with the latter being the least-likely. Neither happened in the end with the only hardware announcement being the PSP Go!

Meanwhile we didn’t see anything of Heavy Rain which is a serious show stealer but developers QuanticDream have been tight lipped on this one. Metal Gear Solid Rising is presumably not a Microsoft exclusive and we didn’t hear about it Sony’s keynote. Rumours of the follow up to Warhawk being announced under the name of StarHawk never came together.

It’s probably worth noting that in previous years we saw a focus from all three developers on downloadable titles and sales numbers. We didn’t really see much of either which is both good and bad for obvious reasons. I think I’m most disappointed with Heavy Rain, Pikmin 3 and the GTAIV downloadable content, not being shown so as far as expected disappointments it’s honours shared across the board.