Sony and XBox at E3 2016, my thoughts

Yesterday I shared some videos with you about games presented on the first day of the E3 2016, mainly by Nintendo. Now you know I often write about Nintendo handheld games, but Nintendo seems adamant on emphasizing their trademark games this E3 like Zelda, Pokémon and Mario games. Personally I feel they shouldn’t just fall back on well known IP’s, but maybe there will be other goodies in the next days.

Meanwhile I decided that if I wanted to know more about the mayor event that is E3, I should know more about the competition too. So I watched the Sony and the XBox shows.

Sony at the E3

First of all, the intro with the orchestra was really impressive. And I couldn’t help but be spellbound by some of the games shown. Spellbound in a horrifying way though as most of them are so very, very grim. Yes, they all looked amazing on the big screen, the graphics so lifelike. But most of them seemed to be set in an apocalypse world. I felt for the little boy in God of War, he didn’t seem to get a lot of love.image

I watched Horizon Zero Dawn and Detroit, Become Human. After Resident Evil, Biohazard I was just about ready to turn off the show. I know a lot of people will thoroughly enjoy the games they announced, but too me a lot of them reminded me of the Mad Max movies. They paint a picture of a world that is so grim and so basic, putting little value on human interaction and emotions. Then they featured the PS VR, a new devise that will be available in the US from October 13 for $ 399. That got me mildly interested. It should feature more then 50 games. They showed Star Wars Battlefront,  and I guess the Star Trek game I mentioned yesterday will be released on the VR system too.

XBox at the E3

After that I watched the highlights from the XBox show. Again, a lot of grim scenarios in the games they showed, with a preference for Zombies, or so it seemed with DeadRising 4 and State of Decay. Forza Horizon 4 didn’t make me happy either.

Not all was grim in the XBox presentation though. The Gwent digital card game, based on the Witcher 3, was a surprise for the fans. As was the XBox Play Anywhere concept: all XBox games will be playable on Windows 10 too, which should prove to be a very good addition for gamers. I liked the way XBox emphasized playing together with friends through their XBox Live service. They made Clubs available for you to create communities to chat and play with gaming friends. A special feature was the MineCraft community: from now on, players across the various platforms (XBox, Windows and iOS) can play together and even host guests in their own world!

Looking back the shows reminded me why I love Nintendo games so much, most of the games shown just aren’t relaxation for me! Though of course, there was positive highlights too: it might not be the game for me, but at least there’s  some fun to be had on the XBox en PlayStation too, as this South Park game shows:

 

 

9 comments

  1. I agree. Nintendo makes the games I remember enjoying as a child, and I just can’t get into a lot of the other games from other systems. That said, I thought that Sony had a particularly impressive showing. God of War, Final Fantasy XV, Detroit, some Crash Bandicoot chatter, and that odd Kojima game. It was entertaining though. Microsoft’s looked good, though I wasn’t particularly interested in most of their games. I did enjoy that South Park trailer from the Ubisoft conference! One of the funniest game trailers I’ve ever seen, haha.

    1. A good thing tastes differ. You know, my heart really went out to the little boy in God of War that didn’t want to kill the deer. Silly huh? And that’s why this ostrich will never play such a game!

  2. So much that comes out for XBox and to a lesser extent, Sony, cater to the 16-39 year old male audience. There are some great games for the various PS devices (e.g., the Atelier series) but that’s why I will always love Nintendo. They make great games for everybody!

  3. That is quite true that most of the games are rather dark. I think the only dark series I really loved was Castelvania and I look forward to his new project Bloodstained. There are not a whole lot of games I really like on the major consoles though. I’m happy sticking with the 3Ds and the games my laptop can handle.

    1. I guess such dark games aren’t a good idea for this ostrich. I’m happy to dive into my magical and colorful worlds, enough things grim around us in the real world!

  4. I’ve liked the “dark” games for years, but after getting back into Nintendo last summer those other games just don’t do it for me. They just sort of stress me out. I like relaxing with some good ol’ gaming happiness, which for my money is best spent on Nintendo stuff 🙂

    1. Yeah, I know what you mean. I do see that those games can be great to immerse yourself into a virtual world. But to me, they feel so gloomy.
      Nintendo manages to avoid that in most cases, that’s why I like them!

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