Category: E3

We’ve circled back around to the price of our hobby again. Not so much the consoles and PC components, those will always run a premium. But the games.

Nintendo is testing those waters with their first party titles. So, it’s their exclusives. If you want to play them you’ll have to pay those prices.

Microsoft is doing the same. Again, exclusives, but both on console and PC. Still, $80 either way you go. If you want to play them you’ll have to pay those prices. Or go gamepass – which could be the incentive and the ultimate goal…more subscribers. Executives LOVE subscribers. Why get one lump of money out of the consumers when you can get monthly lumps of money from them?

GTA6 is likely to be a pricey title. Exclusive to consoles (for a while) and eventually on PC, probably at the same price or more by that time. If you want to play them you’ll have to pay those prices. And they will without question. They may complain, but they’ll pay.

The real test of this experiment will come at the hands of non-GTA6 third party titles. Borderlands 4, so far, seems to be where we’ll see that experiment in action. People won’t skip a GTA6 at a ridiculous price but BL4? That’s where we see if this pricing has legs for those third parties.

My initial guess is no, it won’t have any legs at all. Sales will be low, to begin with and even positive reviews won’t save it – assuming it even gets those. And that’s the thing, no matter how good your game reviews, it’s likely no one is willing to fork over that kind of money to experience it until it drops in price. You’ve got to be a top tier title to ask for that kind of money or an exclusive we can’t experience anywhere else in any other way. Save for, as I said earlier, a subscription service.

The problem, I think, is that regardless of sales, it won’t bring the price down. These $80 game failures won’t stop inflation. But hopefully it gives rise to those indies and smaller studios NOT spending multiple millions to make a game.

Who knows what Ubisoft is spending on the next Splinter Cell. Even the remake announcement is 4 years old at this point with NOTHING to show for it. It has been 4,318 days since a new Splinter Cell game (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise, remake, BBC radio drama, or VR exclusive) was released.

Also, there’s been 2,422 job losses in the gaming industry since January 1, 2025.

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“Too much is not enough”

Actually, yeah. Yeah, I kinda think too much is more than enough.

They need to space these things out. The Summer Game Fest video alone is 3.5 hours long. And it is back to back to back titles over and over again. The next day had SEVEN more events of game announcements, and the day after that had, at the very least, 3 more events.

I feel like this is the same complaint I had last year, maybe. I love new game announcements as much as the next person and I’m not saying they shouldn’t be here, but just…space it out over the summer instead of in one single weekend.

And during the launch weekend of a brand new console!

Maybe I’m an old man yelling at clouds here, but a lot of these titles might actually get some space in our heads and conversation if we weren’t drowning in the announcements.

We kinda rush through a lot of them in this episode mainly because there are so many and we didn’t even finish. Next week will be more of the same, and I’ll probably rant about it then as well.

Speaking of rants, the clock is ticking Ubisoft. It has been 4,311 days since a new Splinter Cell game (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise, remake, BBC radio drama, or VR exclusive) was released.

Also, there’s been 2,382 job losses in the gaming industry since January 1, 2025.

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Just as a note – there is no show for next week.

As for this show, we dive right into everything we never got around to from the last episode. We finally cover all over what the not-E3 had to offer as well as go through all the things we’re finding out from the FTC vs Microsoft case for the purchase of Activision/Blizzard.

It’s a lot crammed into less than 2 hours of show and we barely touched on anything we played (I actually did put in time with other games/demos besides Destiny).

All in all, this is a pretty big year for games. Whatever has aligned has given us TWO new entries into the grandfathers of fighting games with Street Fighter 6 and MK1. A new entry into the Final Fantasy series. A new Zelda game, Assassin’s Creed and Starfield is yet to come.

Hopefully there’s something in the mix you’ll be enjoying or looking forward to.

As for me, I’m still waiting for another Sam Fisher game. Ubisoft, it has been 3,583 days since a new Splinter Cell game (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise, remake, BBC radio drama, or VR exclusive) was released.

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I’ll just tell you upfront here that we didn’t get to nearly all the topics we wanted to on the show. We barely got through the Microsoft presentation. Much less ANY of the others or even Starfield. But that’s on me cause I ramble. A lot.

To just sort of cover the whole thing in general, I thought it all was a pretty good showing. There is A LOT to look forward to not only in the coming months but also next year as well (should all those dates hold – they won’t).

Starfield is incredibly ambitious and just struck me in the head with the whole deep dive that was done and I was left wanting so much more. Not that the game needs more, but I really want to see more of it. My concern that I tried to mention on the show was the comparisons to No Man’s Sky.

I can’t really make that comparison since I haven’t played Starfield, but I also really haven’t put in the time and effort with No Man’s Sky either. I’d like to have some opinions though. I’d like to know from No Man’s Sky fans and players who DID put in that effort, what do you think of Starfield? As they were describing everything and showing it off, it seemed to come with this feeling of “look how big and massive our game is and all this stuff you can do with spaceships and outposts and planets – it’s amazing!”, but it’s been done before, right? Like, the NMS and Starfield comparison is legit, isn’t it? Not that two games doing something similar can’t exist, of course, but it seems like the comparison is muted, maybe. I’m not sure. I would just like a take on Starfield from NMS players. What did you think? Did it make you want to start all over again? Did it not matter at all and you just want more space exploration? What did you think?

In fact, what did all of you think of this year’s presentations and the games shown off? What about the games missing? Let us know.

Speaking of missing games, I was all set for SOMETHING related to Sam Fisher and the Splinter Cell games, but there was nothing. I was really surprised Ubisoft didn’t mention this at all. It has been 3,576 days since a new Splinter Cell game (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise, remake, BBC radio drama, or VR exclusive) was released.

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E3 is dead. Long live E…nah, dead’s fine, actually.

E3 is likely done. I mean, it is for this year for certain, but likely in the years to come. If it comes back it would need to be massively overhauled and delivered in a much different way than it was before.

But I don’t think it’s coming back. There’s so many alternatives to it now and the companies themselves (the big ones and probably a lot of the small ones) are just doing their own thing to get the word out. E3 is prehistoric almost. There is no need for what it once offered. I mean, there was a time it was needed, just like there was a time gaming magazines were needed (and don’t get me wrong, I’m still kind of fond of the ones who’ve stuck around), but it’s a dinosaur compared to how we get our information now and more so how the companies want to deliver it to us. Really surprised it never happened sooner, but that it took something like a global pandemic to bring the whole thing down.

I don’t know what needs to be done to bring it back to whatever glory it had. This goes back to a time when we could only get our gaming info from, mostly, magazines. It’s really hard to top, well, the internet when it comes to delivering information related to gaming. It’ll be interesting to see if they try and how, but I’m not holding my breath.

We MIGHT get a new Splinter Cell game before we get another E3. Ubisoft…it has been 3,499 days since a new Splinter Cell game (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise, remake, BBC radio drama, or VR exclusive) was released.

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Too much is not enough…

I remember when I was younger I had it in my mind that more was better. If the movie trailer was longer it was great cause you saw more of the movie you wanted to see. If the TV program was longer you got more of the show you wanted to see. If this company’s E3 presentation was scheduled for 2 hours instead of 90 minutes then you got more games to see.

What I didn’t notice then but do now, is that the longer your show is, and we’re strictly speaking of video game reveals and stuff here, the more I’m going to forget than remember. There’s probably some study about memory retention and how it all works in the process of marketing but the more they showed this past week, the more I forgot.

And to be clear, you can have a 90 minute presentation and show a good chunk of maybe 7 games or so, and I’d be fine with that. I can probably hold onto about 7 titles. But as it stands with Microsoft, I can tell you maybe 3. Possibly 4, I guess, but the shows of other studios and publishers start to mix in and I can’t remember what I saw where. Devolver Digital was, I think, maybe 45 minutes. I can tell you almost ALL of their reveals.

This isn’t an argument for or against the old E3 to come back or to keep it the way it was this year. Nothing like that. E3 or not, I like the idea of companies doing their own presentations and scattering them across the months. The State Of Plays that Sony does is a good example of this. As are the Nintendo Directs. They usually have a focus and they keep it concise with usually about a 30 minute runtime and you see maybe 5 to 7 titles. It works, and I’m usually pretty good at remembering what was shown.

Like that one time Ubisoft showed off Splinter Cell Blacklist. Yeah, it’s been 3,224 days since the last Splinter Cell game (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise, remake, or VR exclusive).

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Life moves pretty fast…

This whole Summer Games Fest and Not-E3 thing has kind of surprised me. Well, it’s mostly me, I think. It seems to have come and gone with very little fanfare that I can tell. But, again, maybe that’s me just not paying attention. But it feels like the hype train was little more than a hype trolley, I suppose. I’m not sure, but it feels like there was very little leading up to this (it came kind of out of the blue for me thinking it would be later in the summer or AFTER the Microsoft thing), and there was also very little to come after it.

This isn’t a call for E3 to return, even though I know it will. Just…something felt off about it this year. Lack of leaks, lack of big reveals and more just giving us extra information of things we already knew were coming. It’s not a disappointment, really, because I had no expectations, but what we got seems…slim. Small. Nothing has built up hype.

That isn’t to say we didn’t get some looks at some interesting titles. There were a ton of games thrown at us over the course of a few days with more to come, and what I’ve seen so far is some great stuff. Most of that comes from the indie side of things with the smaller games showing off some big swing for the fences type of innovation or creativity. I’ve seen quite a large number of puzzle games and platformers along with a whole slew of life sims (Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing type games) that have all caught my eye. Not so much with the AAA titles. Yes, they look good and are sparking my interests but you’re not showing me much of the game it seems, and by that I mean actual gameplay.

We’ll likely be back here again next weekend saying more of the same depending on how next week (and specifically today, Sunday, goes with the Microsoft presentation). I guess the good thing about not having an E3 means it doesn’t contain itself within a few days of one single week in June. Now, we have all summer for ANYTHING to pop up. Companies can do their own thing whenever they want.

In that way, it’s almost always E3.

E3 or not, we’ll still be disappointed because…Ubisoft, it’s been 3,217 days since the last Splinter Cell game (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise, remake, or VR exclusive).

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Just a head’s up that there will be no show for next weekend. We’ll see you back on Saturday the 10th.

Thinking back on this episode, I mentioned why we weren’t talking about Activision and all the money they are giving to ol’ Bobby. I’d said it was because it always happens, each year, without fail. Doesn’t matter how much they made or how many they laid off, Bobby gotta eat.

So, after saying why we wouldn’t talk about that, I go on to do the exact same thing but with E3. It’s sort of the same cycle. Year after year, the same complaints and praises roll around. The companies those are directed at may change, but it’s the same thing. And then, after it’s all over, the same discussion always takes place about the need or needlessness of E3.

So, we’ve had it a bit of both ways. Last year there was no E3 and it felt strange. This year was a sort of digital E3 kind of thing and it also felt a bit strange. I can’t really tell what I like better. Sporadic E3 where over the course of some months we get a presentation here and there or the buffet E3 where it all happens over the course of a few days.

Either way, I think these companies are going to make their own decisions. They’ve had it both ways as well, and I’d suspect the future will show us exactly what they prefer of the two.

In the meantime, Ubisoft, it’s been 2,867 days since the last Splinter Cell release (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise or VR exclusive).

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We’re a week out from E3 at this point and we barely break the bubble of discussion on it. I’m saving a lot of articles I had for this episode and bringing them over for the next episode just to discuss more of E3.

Especially the analytics of it. All the analysis of everything that happened after it was over. Some of these are the most interesting to read and they make cases for and against the whole thing. I used to boil this stuff down in my head and would always come to the core of it – and that’s money, usually. Profitability. And, indeed, that’s still there, but it doesn’t seem to take an “E3” to get us there.

We speak a bit on Microsoft and their performance for E3 – winners all around, I think. As much as I’ve railed in years past (and this year as well, before Microsoft last Sunday) about too much talk and not enough show – Microsoft listened. I was more than impressed by not what they had to offer (some of it was great), but how they offered it. It felt a bit like Sony in some years previous, although it lacked a few “wow” factors. Still, I can’t really knock that since it was just game after game after game with very little talk in between.

Do more of this.

In the meantime, Ubisoft, it’s been 2,860 days since the last Splinter Cell release (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise or VR exclusive).

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Happy E3! This past week had new reveals as did this past weekend, and we’ve got more as of today’s posting here and more to come in the days ahead. So there’s still plenty of time to recover and redeem the fact that Ubisoft dropped the ball on Splinter Cell, yet again.

It’s unlikely, however, to redeem itself on presentation. But this horse has been beaten beyond death at this point. I’ll just give my usual summation: Less talky talky and more showy showy.

But I don’t know how much that even matters anymore. E3 isn’t like what it used to be in the sense that you would watch it live because you might miss out on something cool. Now, within minutes of a presentation the highlights are ready for you in YouTube form for whatever it was you missed. And it cuts out all the talky talky.

Anyway, E3 is here and regardless of no Splinter Cell, I’m still enjoying it (thanks Devolver). And we’ll be back next week to talk about what we see today and the days to come.

In the meantime, Ubisoft, it’s been 2,854 days since the last Splinter Cell release (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise or VR exclusive).

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And now we’re on the other side of E3 with…well, not much to show for it. At least not until Spring of next year it seems. We open the show talking about this, but there was VERY little shown of gameplay or games that are coming out this actual year. Thankfully Nintendo was there at the end of the press conferences to just have a knock out performance of a presentation.

I’m curious of some alternate universe where Sony was at E3 this year and what, if anything, would have changed. Probably nothing, if I think about it. Just more footage of games coming out next year, but Sony’s usually way more involved in showing actual gameplay – pre-recorded if not live even.

We don’t get around to nearly everything we’d planned to talk about coming out of the week that was, but we’ll carry it over to next week. Can’t pass up talking about that whole Shenmue 3 exclusivity situation, now can we?

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As it is every year at this time: Happy E3!

The conferences start today, Sunday, and will continue on into Tuesday when E3 starts proper. Though who cares about that? We want our press conferences and our game trailers. What we REALLY want is gameplay and dates and prices. What we’ll get are teases, CG trailers, recorded demos that are “played live”, and tons of cringe. Don’t forget the cringe.

That’s maybe a jaded way of looking at it, and an exaggeration as well, but it happens. Things feel a bit different this year without Sony. Not that it makes it any less exciting, but there’s a gap to be sure.

We’ll see you next Saturday on the other side of E3.

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We’ve got a line on a great deal on ribs at the following link.

E3 is over. What did you think?

Sony was a surprise for me and not really in any sort of a good way. I recognize their idea to do something different, but I don’t think it played to their favor. As much as I can’t stand someone on stage talking on end from a PR checklist of things to say about a game, it goes the same for me watching someone play music from the game (and, as much as I love him, that goes for AWK as well). That isn’t to say I don’t appreciate it, but I’m really here to see the game they’re promoting. A compromise maybe would be to show some parts of the game intercut with the live performance. Same with someone on stage talking about the game, come to think of it.

Microsoft was a surprise for me in that they showed off A LOT of games. Not too many exclusives, however, but that segment where they rattled off all the new companies they bought may change that in the next few years. Plus, we got the very first mention of a new console, ever so small as it was. Then again, I’m not so sure some of the games we saw we’ll actually be playing on our current systems anyway.

That was the other thing about this E3. A lot of publishers were short on dates. Very few games got them and those that did were either just “2019”, February of 2019 – have you looked at what we’re getting in the span of 31 days starting on January 29th?

Seriously, check it out, we’re all going to be VERY busy right after the new year if those dates hold.

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Our cynical sense is tingling at the following link.

E3 is upon us. EA’s announcements are already off the table and that wasn’t all too fulfilling for us so we’re hoping the next few days have a little more meat on the bones. We have a bit of a recap for EA’s event here but there just wasn’t that much to bite into. Even with Anthem being less than a year away they gave us very little on that game. The gameplay shown was edited video. How do you form a team? How do you find other players? Can we fast travel to locations on a map? Movement is flying, it seems, but are there vehicles that can also get us around? How’s the in-game economy work? What do we get when we defeat enemies? How do we obtain new weapons or armor? They answered a lot of questions but very little of those questions had to do with how the gameplay works but more how the game works. There’s no PVP, there’s no lootboxes, it’s always online, there can be a team of four, you can go underwater, etc. They didn’t sell me on the game and they’ve got less than a year to do that.

Let’s hope the longer times we get from the other companies press conferences this week can show off a bit more about how a game plays and less about how a game works.

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We’re not buying the hype at the following link.

I’ve had about a week to think on it. By it I mean E3. There are so very few silver linings from this year, it’s hard to be hopeful. About the only two things I can get excited for is New Colossus and Super Mario Odyssey.

Microsoft is just blowing it with a $500 console. Sony’s lineup looked nice but outside of Uncharted in August, everything else is sometime next year. Seriously…go back and watch and see what of their exclusives gets released this year. Ubisoft has Assassin’s Creed Origins – I’m not sold on them turning a new leaf with this franchise until it actually happens. Mario & Rabbids looked WAY better than I expected as far as gameplay is concerned. Then their big moment was Beyond Good & Evil 2 only to find out it’s at day 0 of development. So square one, essentially, from the last time they showed us that game.

EA had nothing. Yes, Battlefront 2 is still nothing. Need For Speed just might hook me with their Burnout style takedowns, but I’m going to need to see more before I get even halfway excited for that title. The PC Gaming show was completely horrible compared to years past. Massive let down there. Bethesda had nothing but the New Colossus game as I mentioned and whatever that Dishonored thing was – whenever that gets released.

Then there’s Destiny 2. We’re saving that one for next week.

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