E3 2012: Grading the Publishers

10:22 PM - June 8, 2012 - by Catherine Cai

Table of contents

1. Sifting Through the E3 Annoucements

The excitement of E3 2012 wrapped up yesterday, and we’ve decided to recap the best of the publishers who hosted conferences (and per-conferences), as well as look at what each player has in store for 2012 and beyond.

E3 was jam packed with new releases this year, which is about as surprising as the sky being blue. 2012 marks a transition year for the industry, however, as Nintendo reveals more about the Wii U. Microsoft and Sony are expected to be announcing their next-gen consoles sometime within the next year, so many of the title releases that were shown this year are both next-gen Wii titles as well as swan songs for the outgoing Xbox 360 and PS3. Of course the latter assumes that Microsoft and Sony will both announce and release new hardware in 2013, which might not be the case. Many were expecting some sort of Xbox 720 and PS4 news on Monday, but there was nary a whisper regarding those consoles.

So how did all of the big publishers and developers fare? We’ve assigned letter grades for each, and some of our conclusions might surprise you.

Comments

Comment:

jwin742 06/09/2012 3:40 AM

Hide

There's no Ubisoft review.

dconnors 06/09/2012 5:05 AM

Hide

jwin742 :
There's no Ubisoft review.

Yup! CMS decided to duplicate the Nintendo page, but it's fixed now.
-Devin Connors, Tom's Guide

mazty 06/09/2012 7:51 PM

Hide

Economists wiped 20% off Nintendo share prices due to how bad their conference was.
The Invisible Wall guys, core gamers, stated how they felt the wrong audience was addressed and were encouraged NOT to buy the WiiU

To give nintendo a B- is wholly wrong and not addressing fundamental flaws such as a large amount of the games shown are already 6 months old and will be even older alone by the time the console is actually released.

blackjackcf 06/09/2012 10:26 PM

Hide

mazty :
Economists wiped 20% off Nintendo share prices due to how bad their conference was. The Invisible Wall guys, core gamers, stated how they felt the wrong audience was addressed and were encouraged NOT to buy the WiiUTo give nintendo a B- is wholly wrong and not addressing fundamental flaws such as a large amount of the games shown are already 6 months old and will be even older alone by the time the console is actually released.

Thanks for the feedback.

I felt that Nintendo had the strongest conference of the big three, simply because they chose to address actual games as opposed to the extra entertainment stuff that Microsoft and Sony were pushing. I felt splitting everything into three conferences and a pre-conference was a horrid idea on Nintendo's part, but at least it gave Nintendo time to show off what E3 is really about: games.

Just my two cents on the issue. I feel that since E3 is a gaming convention that conferences should address just that. Leave SmartGlasses for another time.

lunyone 06/10/2012 1:19 PM

Hide

And what about all of the booth babes in the Nintendo sections I heard they had about 177 babes for just Nintendo (which I could believe). They had the most there by 10x than any other group. The booth babes were very nice and helpful (generally). The system reminded me of the original Wii, which is good for casual gamers but not so much for Xbox/PS3 gamers. I still feel they have some good ideas, but fail to impress the core group of gamers, due to lack of hardware and quality "gamer" type games.