Winners and Losers of E3 2012

Biggest Winner: 3rd Party Developers


UFC announced a new partnership with EA, severing their ties with THQ. EA also displayed Madden NFL 13 with Kinect controls demonstrated by the greatest QB ever, Joe Montana. Call of Duty: Black Ops II had an impressive trailer, although many were bored with the very idea of a new CoD game every single year. 3rd party games managed to be the hot topic, whether it was EA's Dead Space 3, Ubisoft's Splinter Cell: Blacklist, or Square Enix's Tomb Raider. While the Big 3 are undoubtedly developing new consoles (with Nintendo sure to reveal even more info about the Wii U at the Tokyo Game Show), the 3rd party guys will make sure the end of this console cycle continues to get great games.


Biggest Loser: Microsoft


It was an awful show. Not a single addressing of the Xbox 720 rumors, another trailer for Halo 4, a game no one is really that hyped for, more Fable, announcing that the Xbox will have an internet  browser in the next update, but oh wait, it's Internet Explorer powered by Bing, and so forth. Oh, and just to top things off, more fucking Kinect bullshit. Smartglass is an interesting concept, but so was Kinect, and look how hard that failed. Sony seems geared to make a gigantic announcement at next year's E3 after having a low key presser this year, but Microsoft just appears to be lost and aimless.


Honorary Mention: Spike TV and GameTrailers E3 Coverage


Live and in HD, no bullshit. Geoff Keighly. World premiere trailers and gameplay footage after the press conferences on E3 All Access. If it weren't for GameTrailers and Spike, I would not have heard anything about Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance since IGN and Joystiq both refused to cover anything first shown on Spike or GameTrailers and G4 continued to have unbelievably inept coverage with the addition of Jessica Chobot of IGN. It was awesome and straight to the point, without having G4 hosts constantly creaming themselves at everything and IGN and Joystiq having lazily written stories on games people are really interested in. I expect big things from Spike and GT if they decide to cover the Tokyo Game Show on TV this September.