It’s that time of the year again when the world’s gaming press and the collective eyes of gamers across the globe descend upon the Los Angeles Convention Centre for the biggest games industry trade show of the year.
2013 is already shaping up to be the most important year in the industry since the PS3 was launched in 2006 and it is likely that audience figures for live conference streams are going to peak higher than ever before.
Microsoft will be kicking off the proceedings tonight with their press conference at 9am Pacific/5pm UK time which promises to be much more focused on games than last month’s #XboxReveal event. With talk of mandatory online connectivity, forced Kinect, and expensive license purchases required for pre-owned titles, this could only be a good thing.
EA are next in line with a live conference at 1pm Pacific/9pm UK time, followed by Ubisoft at 3pm Pacific/11pm UK time and then Sony at 6pm Pacific/2am UK time tomorrow morning (on behalf of all Europeans Sony, seriously, thanks for that). The too cool for the playground Nintendo will then be doing their own thing with a online Nintendo Direct conference live from Tokyo at 7am Pacific/3pm UK time tomorrow. We will be adding post-show write ups of all of the conferences, obviously minus the marketing ghuff, so keep your eyes on the Geek Pride space for what promises to be an extremely exciting couple of days in the games industry calendar.
Just to get things going, an apparently ‘leaked’ trailer for Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs has also hit the internet this morning. The trailer is entirely made up of quite frankly incredible CGI but hopefully Ubisoft should also have more in-game footage for us later on tonight.
WD-E3-CGI-Trailer-UPlay-EXP 480 from Aiden Pearce on Vimeo.
As a nice pre-E3 treat, Xbox Live Gold subscribers can currently download Fable III free of charge today too. The last Peter Molyneux-directed episode in the Xbox-exclusive series received some mixed reviews and feedback but you can’t argue with the price. Note that is currently up for debate whether this offer is an intentional promotion or just a massive Microsoft balls-up so it’s probably best not to hang around for too long.
To get your free copy of the game, search for it on the Xbox Dashboard or login to your Live account using the Xbox website using the link below and change the purchase currency to Microsoft Points. Unfortunately this deal is for Gold subscribers only.
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Fable-III/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024d5308d6?cid=SLink
I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve all over again….
What are you most looking forward to at this year’s E3? Let us know in the comments section below or on Facebook or Twitter.
