I don’t need to tell you that E3 is, by far, the biggest gaming show/convention of all time. While other conventions, like Tokyo Game Show and PAX, are gradually growing and gaining more traction, it seems highly unlikely that any of them will be able to dethrone E3 as the absolute leader any time soon. This year, E3 was bigger than ever, with no less than nine presentations running across the first three days of the event. It was crazy! At some point I had to actually stop watching one of the presentations midway through to switch to the other, and I don’t think that’s ever happened at E3 before (though I could be wrong, my memory is notoriously bad). But bigger isn’t always better, and the question is, were we satisfied?

Sadly, for the most part, the answer is no. Many of the companies that did presentations didn’t appear to have that much to show us, having to resort to developer videos and interviews in order to fill out their running time. EA and Ubisoft were definitely among the worst offenders this year, since neither of them really announced anything new that was in any way shocking or even surprising, and both had segments that I believe were unsuitable for the stage of a show as big as E3. What I wanted to see from EA the most were “Mass Effect Andromeda” and Star Wars games, and we only saw videos of developers talking vaguely about the game and giving us no new information whatsoever. It has been four years since “Mass Effect 3” came out, and you mean to tell me that the folks at Bioware haven’t even put a proper trailer together?

Last year, many of the games which were announced as being Xbox One exclusive were later revealed to also be in development for PC. This year, Microsoft didn’t even try and hide the fact – they catered to their PC audience and openly labeled the overwhelming majority of the games they presented as being “Xbox One and Windows 10 Exclusive”, which led to an Internet joke about how this was the Windows 10 conference. While Microsoft absolutely did a whole lot better than EA and Ubisoft, showcasing gameplay from many exciting games like “Scalebound”, ultimately I felt like their presentation failed to have a proper punch. There wasn’t really a moment that made me go “Holy crap, look at THAT!!!” and jump out of my seat. That’s what the Sony press conference was for.

As far as I’m concerned, Sony did everything right. Now, keep in mind that this is a company which has, in the past, hosted some of the worst E3 press conferences in history, with embarrassments that have become memes such as “$599” and “giant enemy crab”. Since then, though, the company has really stepped up their game as far as E3 is concerned, and this year they absolutely took the cake. Sure, the conference started a little slow, with some live orchestral music (exciting), but it was quickly revealed that the build-up was worth it – the conference started with a 10 minute gameplay demo of a new “God of War” game, and it only got better from there. “Crash Bandicoot” is officially back after so many years, David Cage has shown us that he’ll keep pushing the envelope of narrative-driven gameplay with “Detroit”, “The Last Guardian” – a game that many believed would never see the light of day – finally got a release date, and best of all, the legendary Hideo Kojima revealed the first trailer for his latest game. Think about it – after departing from Konami, Kojima’s non-compete clause expired in mid-December. That means that within six months the guy managed to assemble a team out of nothing and create a concept for a game advanced enough to have a trailer for AND then make the actual trailer using in-game footage. Meanwhile, it’s been four years and established studio Bioware still hasn’t released a proper trailer for “Mass Effect Andromeda”. Gotta love it.

Overall, it’s fair to say that, while for the most part this E3 was pretty disappointing, the Sony press conference more than made up for it. So at the end of the day I’m happy with it! Now, if only we could get a consumer-oriented show like that, but for iGaming! I can’t get all my information from sites like realmoney.co.uk/online-casino/ all the time, you know! Sometimes you gotta add a little flair to those slot announcements!