After the obligatory year off in 2020, the largest and most important electronic entertainment fair in the world is back: the Electronic Entertainmemt Expo, better known as E3.
Unlike the German Gamescom which takes place in August in Cologne and which tried to organize a physical event with contingent entries of visitors and journalists, only to change its mind during the race, the Californian fair immediately chose a totally digital approach. The news is equally positive, given that it will allow different publishers and developers to concentrate their presentations in a specific time frame, in order to take advantage of the very high attention of the public that last year was too confused by the lack of a more structured programming.
With the restoration of E3, the video game industry tries to return to normal in such a problematic period: it was not easy to adapt the development of new products to smart working, despite the fact that, from a remunerative point of view, due to of lockdowns has never been played as much video game as in the last fifteen months.
Da Hogwarts a Gotham City
What can we expect from this new (we are at an altitude of thirty-six) edition of E3? First of all, many, many backlogs: in recent years a myriad of products have been introduced to the public which, partly because of the pandemic, have never really been presented in detail, and which now finally have the opportunity to declare and in some cases confirm their existence. Among the most affected by these continuous postponements is Warner, which in the works has titles of huge appeal such as Hogwarts Legacy, potentially the best video game ever dedicated to the world of Harry Potter, and the action based on the DC universe dedicated to the Suicide Squad. and to the great Batman family, who will return but without the dark knight in Gotham Knight. The last highly anticipated Lego Star Wars is still in the garage, already presented for two years and now finally the home straight. Even the entertainment giant 2K seems to have several news in store for fans, from a spin-off of the beloved Borderlands to a new strategy signed by Firaxis that will try to adapt the winning formula of X-Com to the Marvel universe. Increasingly large and sprawling, Koch Media has already shown several minor projects behind the scenes, and in the midst of E3 is preparing for a respectable showcase in which, in all likelihood, the sequel to the exceptional will be unveiled among many Kingdom Come Deliverance, a very particular role-playing game, extremely realistic and for once not set in the usual fantasy world, but in a historically accurate medieval Bohemia.
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News between hardware and software
Ubisoft, on the other hand, seems to want to concentrate on all those titles that have remained in the works beyond the originally scheduled times, but significant surprises are not excluded. Even the Japanese will not be outdone, especially Sega which has multiplied its investments on new projects and SquareEnix, working on several rather important titles among which the new Final Fantasy XVI stands out. What about the big three hardware manufacturers? Sony, as has been the case for several years now, will not be there, but an event unrelated to E3 in late summer is not excluded. Nintendo, on the other hand, is the only one that could present a new hardware: the much talked about Switch Pro, an enhanced version of the currently best-selling console in circulation, as well as returning to all those games announced too vehemently in past years but still shrouded in mystery, like Zelda Breath of the Wild 2 and the new Metroid.
Microsoft is the one that, on the other hand, could have more games to show: it has been collecting software houses for years to increase its “firepower” and the time has come for sowing to move on to harvesting. It should be noted that the Microsoft event will be in collaboration with Bethesda, the flagship software house of the former Zenimax empire that the giant led by Satya Nadella bought for gold (7.5 billion dollars) in 2020, and which could also serve to show the world and for the first time the long-awaited Starfield, a very high budget role-playing game set between spaceships and stars.
In short, there does not seem to be a problem of quantity or quality. Many games will be presented during E3; the problem will be how to get out of this traffic jam due to Covid, plan its debut in stores: the more games overlap at the starting blocks, the more possible failures will be.