E3 (The Electronic Entertainment Expo) is one of the biggest opportunities each year for game developers and publishers to make surprise announcements to help build interest in their games.
As a result, there is often wild speculation as to what we will see by the end of the week. The wildest speculation, however, is aimed directly at the five major press events at the beginning of the week.
All the big guys have posted their predictions already, but we here at Engaged Family Gaming would be remiss if we didn’t publish our own thoughts. We put our heads together and came up with three very solid predictions.
1. Nintendo will announce a Super Mario Galaxy HD Collection
The WiiU just isn’t moving units right now, but the system itself isn’t the entire problem. Instead, players are faced with a severe lack of games to play on the hardware. Third party publishers are not bringing major games to the console and Nintendo has been slow to release its own titles. There have literally been entire MONTHS without a major WiiU release. This is a significant problem because it devalues the experience.
Nintendo has a chance to alleviate some of this problem by releasing remastered versions of their successful Wii games. Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 are perfect examples of games that would be well received by fans and would help fill that gap.
This collection would be a day one purchase in my house and would be a great way for younger children to experience one of the best Mario games in history.
2. The hardware manufacturer’s will cut the prices for last generation consoles.
The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are selling well, but they don’t even come close to having the massive install bases of their predecessors. Many companies are still making what are called “cross-gen” games meaning that they are produced for both current and previous generation consoles. As a result, there is value in capitalizing on the old tech with late adopters.
We predict that at least two of the three hardware manufacturers will drop prices.
3. The Last Guardian will finally be shown… again.
The Last Guardian, a PlayStation exclusive title being developed by Team ICO, has been in development for the better part of a decade. But, it has only been shown at E3 once (2009!) The previous games released by Team ICO were some of the most artful games every made so virtually the entire gaming world has been hungry for The Last Guardian since it was shown off.
You might be asking yourself…. Why is Engaged Family Gaming making a prediction about a game that hasn’t been shown off since 2009? Why do we even really care?
Good question. The last game developed by Team ICO was Shadows of the Colossus. This game was transformative for the video games industry because it clearly demonstrated that emotion and story could be conveyed through the game mechanics themselves. If they could do that in 2005, then one can only imagine what they have managed to pull off since then.
We predict that The Last Guardian will be shown off and that we will see a release date somewhere in 2015. (Although we would be more than happy to see a 2014 release date.)
What about you? Do you have any predictions you would like to share with us? Post them in the comments and we can circle back after the show and see how we all did!
sustanol 300
