E3 Precap: What's Left to Announce?
Publishers are starting to announce their games before E3 instead of at E3. What's going on here?
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I haven't been doing the 'games writer' thing for as long as Jaz, Jeremy, Kat, or Bob. This will be my third E3 in attendance, fourth if I count the E3 1997 in Atlanta, back when game retail employees could still get into the event. The classic perception is that E3 is where publishers go to announce their latest and greatest titles. After the crush of the holiday season, there's the quiet of the first quarter with a steady build-up to the megaton of information that is the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Press conferences, teasers, trailers, hands-on; for one week, we enthusiasts drink deep of the marketing kool-aid, getting excited for the next year of releases.
This year, something weird is happening. Publishers have jumped the gun when it comes to what they're showing off at E3. Crytek USA's Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age was announced today. Yesterday we had the reveals of Netherrealm's Mortal Kombat X and Forza Horizon 2 from Playground Games. That's only the tip of the iceberg, as over the past month we've had announcements for Homefront: the Revolution by Crytek, Battlefield: Hardline from Visceral Games, Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham by TT Games, Far Cry 4 from Ubisoft, Call of Duty: Advance Warfare by Sledgehammer Games, and 343's Halo 5: Guardians. Then there are games like the Halo Collection and Project Beast, hard rumors that probably exist, but they're not officially announced yet.
These aren't small releases. Many of them are the bread-and-butter of their respective studios and classically those types of games are announced at E3. They're in the press conferences from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo or in the press conferences of the larger publishers. So why is everyone jumping the gun?
To get some distance from the rest of the crowd? By my rough count, 85 games were announced at E3 2013 and that's a pretty big mob to try to differentiate yourself from. With many of these pre-announced titles, all we have to go on is a title and trailer, meaning publishers can still save the gameplay reveals for the press events and showfloor. Knowing Halo 5 is coming is one thing, but you'll probably have to tune into Microsoft's conference to see what Halo 5 actually looks like. Taken that way, these releases could actually pull players towards the press conferences. That's a suspect aim, as most enthusiasts were going to watch them anyways.
There's the fact that E3 isn't as important as it once was. Publishers and developers have more ways to reach consumers than they did before. Instead of aligning themselves with a single event in June, they now have Gamescom, PAX, PAX East, and San Diego Comic-Con to work with. They can do their own press events and stream them online for players. Thanks to services like Twitch, publishers can just set up a webcam, put some developers onscreen, and call it a day, like Epic Games did with its announcement of the new Unreal Tournament. CD Projekt RED is doing a livestream event for The Witcher III: Wild Hunt with new footage this Thursday, getting some new gameplay out there before the E3 rush. It's easy for developers and publishers to connect with fans now; we the press just serve to provide context and curation to the never-ending blast of information heading your way.
There's also the possibility that everyone has even better stuff to show off at E3 2014, and they're just getting all these sequels out of the way now. Who needs more sequels when there are all of these brand-new games? We never really know what to expect heading into any E3, as there are always some surprises. Some years don't have the sheer punch of others, but publishers can still wow fans. I'd accept an onstage playthrough of The Last Guardian, Sony.
Again, there were around 85 games announced at E3 2013. We have 11 titles that we already know of heading into E3 2014, so there's still more to be shown, unless the AAA industry contraction is worse than advertised. More first-party releases, more exclusives, more information about the games that have already been announced, and concrete information about rumored titles. I expect this trend of spreading out the big announcements will continue, but E3 isn't dead yet. There's just more opportunities to get your eyeballs on the new hotness, instead of being beholden to a single, expensive song-and-dance.
This is just another ongoing trend in the industry, like delaying all of the titles until 2015. Batman: Arkham Knight, Mad Max, The Order: 1886, Dying Light, The Division, and even Valve's Steam Machines even been pushed back in 2015. Seriously, folks? What am I going to play in the latter part of this year, outside of Assassin's Creed? I'm glad publishers are willing to let developers spend more time on their titles to make them perfect, but damn they're dropping like flies out there.