Taking a break from all the E3 news we still have to finish getting to all of our readers, we wanted to share with you what we were hoping to see at E3 this year. Unfortunately, some items we were eager to view were not there. There were also some things this year at E3 which could have been improved.
Now don’t get us wrong, we are not veterans of E3 although most of us have watched previous years live. We did notice a few things that seemed different this year which we will be looking at below. However, we were eager to see (hopefully) some announcements and games/companies at E3 that ended up not being there.
Order & Chaos – Gameloft
One of the games we were hoping that would be unveiled in some capacity was Order and Chaos from Gameloft. This is their mobile MMORPG that is subscription based and takes a lot of the style from World of Warcraft and brings it to mobile. It has been available for iOs for a little while now and since it’s release, it has been mentioned numerous times that it would be coming to Android. Unfortunately, there was no sign of any sort of demo of Order and Chaos at E3 for Android. The only blip on the radar about Order and Chaos was a podcast Gameloft did that mentioned it would be coming soon. This is something we have heard plenty of already. Unfortunately, not expanding on that after all this time can actually retract interest from the game.
Samsung
Many of our readers may or may not know this but Samsung is a major sponsor over at WCG (World Cyber Games). Similar to MLG (Major League Gaming which Sony Ericsson is a major sponsor of), WCG is a professional gaming league where people compete for major cash prizes, sponsorships and more. Samsung Mobile is one of the divisions of Samsung that happens to be a big sponsor for WCG but Samsung’s presence at E3 was almost non-existent. Companies such as T-Mobile and Sony Ericsson came out strong, Samsung seemed to be content with not having much of a presence. Considering that they are such a big sponsor of WCG, anything would have been better then just flashing a Galaxy Tablet at the Showstoppers.
To compare, Sony Ericsson’s booth had a grip of units to play, each with a different game. Not only that, Notch was there who was is the founder of Minecraft, MLG professional gamers were there to play against and developers such as Spacetime Studios were there the entire time. T-Mobile’s booth was actually a restaurant where you could come in, order some sliders or nachos and while you were waiting, you could play Android games on big screens using Tegra 2 Android devices.
Namco and Konami
Both of these companies were out in full force when it came to console/PC gaming. While Konami completely left mobile out of the picture, Namco had at least a couple of tables set up… in the back. All the games Namco was showing on Android were not new except for one. This particular game, however, wasn’t new in concept and really, if you’ve played Mega Jump or any other game similar to it, then you’ve played this one. At least Bird Zapper was there.
Closed Doors
It seemed as though this E3 presented a ton of stuff to look at but one problem was a lot of it was behind closed doors, more so then any other year. To get into some behind closed doors previewing, you would have to wait for an hour or more. While other companies had everything out for all to see and play, some had you waste valuable time standing in line just to see some gameplay. We got into a lot of places thanks to having appointments set up or asking the right questions such as getting our hands-on time with the OnLive service on the Motorola XOOM. However, we had to jump out of plenty of lines because it was taking too long to get in and these were lines that appointments were not being taken for. As someone in the media, standing in line for an hour during a 3 day event is a lot of time to use up, especially with an event this size with so much to see.
In The End
While there are probably a few more, smaller, things that could be pointed out, these were some of the major ones that stuck out in our minds as E3. Things like a stronger showing from Glu Mobile who happened to be all over GDC 2011, Unreal Engine Android support officially announced would have been nice.
The Android presence and mobile gaming in general will more than likely have an even strong showing next year during E3 2012 considering that console/PC games are becoming playable on mobile devices like Android tablets thanks to services such as OnLive or developers realizing that mobile gaming is a tidal wave that isn’t about to stop anytime soon. There were plenty of mobile gaming items being shown at this years E3 though and we still have plenty more to post so don’t go too far, there is more to come from this year’s E3!
