E3 2015: Ubisoft Press Conference Impressions

2014 was a less than stellar year for Ubisoft's reputation as Watch Dogs fell far short of its hype and Assassin's Creed: Unity was shipped as a broken mess.  Despite Ubisoft's best efforts to fix the situation, many felt betrayed by Ubisoft's transgressions.  So the French publisher had something to prove coming into E3 2015.  The question was: could they deliver?

For how many games Ubisoft crammed into a 60 minutes, the conference moved at an incredible pace.  The hour flew by before you knew it as Ubisoft. much like Bethesda, let the games do the talking for them.  For every minute spent talking, three or more was spent showing live gameplay or pre-rendered trailers.  While I do prefer gameplay over trailers any day, the trailers that Ubisoft showed at their conference were short, sweet and incredibly produced.  My personal favourite was Trials Fusion Awesome Level Max's trailer, which saw a gun-toting cat riding a fire-breathing unicorn.  No, I'm not on crack!  It really happened!

The biggest plus from Ubisoft's conference was most certainly the live demos.  Seeing all those titles played live, including the newly announced For Honor, The Division, Rainbow Six: Siege and TrackMania Turbo, gave me a much better impression on all of them.  I'm actually excited to play all of them.  From a medieval melee combat to a tactical shooter to an arcade racer, there was incredible amount of diversity between the titles demoed and on the show as a whole.

Also, I have to praise Ubisoft for being the only publisher in the video game industry that can actually keep a secret.  There were no leaks or rumours about South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Ghost Recon Wildlands or a new IP in For Honor being set for Ubisoft's press conference.  Not having any prior knowledge on those games made all the surprises feel special, something that rarely happens nowadays.

It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows at Ubisoft's press conference.  There were some problems when it came to presentation.  It has become par for the course that Ubisoft brings in some celebrities to host, make appearances or even sing, but it never usually ends well.  The same can be said for this year's show.  Aisha Tyler tirelessly tried to inject some humour into the conference, but seemed to make things awkward ever single time.  Angela Bassett talking about her role as Six in Rainbow Six: Siege was completely worthless.  And to top it all off, Jason Derulo showed the world that he cannot sing—or he might of just hit puberty—in a moment that was so gloriously awful that it came off as being incredibly funny.  Like watching a train wreck, you couldn't turn your attention away from it.

Despite the problems with the conference's presentation, Ubisoft's press conference was a highly entertaining show.  It let the games stand as the sole focus and kept Aisha Tyler's on-stage shenanigans to a minimum.  You know it's going to be a good show from Ubisoft when the only reference to Tyler's girlwood is her necklace.

Grade:  A-

E3 2015: Microsoft Press Conference Impressions

Microsoft and the Xbox One has been reeling since their infamous performance at E3 2013.  Microsoft hasn't truly won back the support of gamers and the Xbox One is suffering because of it.  What Microsoft needs to do is announce titles that gamers can only find on the Xbox One and commit to shipping them in a timely manner.  The last thing they need is to repeat last year's good showing with no followup.  In fact, three key exclusives from last year's show (Crackdown, Scalebound and Quantum Break) aren't even going to be at E3 2015.  So does Microsoft have a few aces up their sleeve or are we in for another disappointing performance?

After 90 minutes, I can safely say that was Microsoft's best conference in recent memory.  While nothing at the conference was mind-blowing, it had a good mix of new and existing titles along with a couple surprises.

Microsoft's big strength at this conference was live demos.  The live demos for Halo 5, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Minecraft on Hololens and Gears 4 were all well done and highly entertaining to watch.  Out of the all the live demos, the Minecraft on Hololens demo was the best as it perfectly showed the potential of using holograms to interact with games in brand new ways.  Also it was nice to see a greater focus on survival horror and more proportional characters for Gears 4.

Outside of the demos, Microsoft had some solid announcements around exclusive content for Xbox One.  Comcept and Armature's Recore with an intriguing mechanic revolving around building up a team of friendly robots shows loads of potential.  Rare Replay and Sea of Thieves both look to recapture the spirit of Rare's former glory in the forms of a compilation and new IP respectively.  Even the ID@Xbox showcase and Xbox Game Preview unveiling were fun to watch although the approach seemed to be very familiar to Sony's way of highlighting indies at E3.

The one area where the Microsoft conference faltered was when it came to third-parties.  Aside from the Dark Souls III and Plants vs. Zombie: Garden Warfare 2 reveals, they spent a good third of the conference on titles like Fallout 4, The Division and Rainbow Six: Siege without breaking any new ground on them.  In particular, the "exclusive" Fallout 4 gameplay was the same demo from the Bethesda conference with a minute of new content.  On top of that, EA had an embarrassing showing of their EA Access subscription service.  I feel a little sorry for Peter Moore as every announcement he made fell on deaf ears, but the fact is gamers aren't going to respond to EA's crap no matter how nice you make it sound.

While Xbox One backwards compatibility does fall under the good from this conference, I am little skeptical on its functionality.  As Microsoft traditionally loves to do when they take about certain console features, they were very vague in how they outlined backwards compatibility for Xbox One.  Also they made a quick mention to downloading the 360 game to the Xbox One when you put in the game disc.  Due to the vague terminology, I have a feeling that Xbox One backwards compatibility won't be how everybody believes it will be.

Overall, Microsoft's E3 2015 press conference delivered where it counts: first-party content.  It was a relief to see Microsoft pull back from relying on third-parties so much and come more into their own.  Although we won't know if Microsoft can follow-up on these promises until months down the line, they did build the positive momentum needed at this point in time.

Grade:  B+

2014: Year of the Delay

Delays are a natural part of any industry.  Nothing ever goes exactly to plan as issues and problems can occur at anytime during production to negatively affect the estimated time of arrival.  In the video game industry, delays come about regularly as developers run into game-breaking bugs that need additional time to receive the necessary attention or publishers search for the perfect release date for their game to succeed.  While there are quite a few games that slip past their original release date each year, 2014 has seen a large amount of major releases delayed until 2015.  So many delays, in fact, each one seems to make 2014 feel more like a barren wasteland for major releases.

The whole of 2013 was solely focused on launching two brand new systems in the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the heralds of the next generation of video games.  With those brand new consoles, the promise of games to justify their cost and hype was not too far behind.  After experiencing many console launches, a drought of games immediately following the release of these systems was to be expected, but to have this lack of major releases extend the majority of 2014 cannot be overlooked.  Although the good amount of downloadable releases may satisfy the most dedicated gamers between major releases, the vast majority does not scour the PlayStation Store, Xbox Marketplace or Nintendo eShop regularly for games to buy.  Sadly that vast majority focuses on the larger retail titles such as Call of Duty, The Last of Us and Watch Dogs over downloadable games like Child of Light, Shovel Knight and Transistor.  The games being delayed until 2015 (Batman: Arkham Knight, Evolve, The Division and Witcher III) are the system sellers for these next generation consoles and delaying these games until following year will cause more people to hold out on buying a PS4 or Xbox One for the time being.  Each time a major release is delayed, it adds more fuel to the argument that the next generation came a year before it was actually ready.

Despite all the negativity surrounding game delays, they are necessary and beneficial part of the video game industry.  Delays offer developers more time to fix bugs, polish mechanics, balance features and refine a game's content, which all result in making a better product.  Rushing a game to market, especially in an unfinished state, to meet a deadline can do a lot of damage to a company's image than actual good.  While the extra time benefits a game, there are some current trends involving delays that can have an averse effect on a game.  These trends include delaying a game just a few weeks before its release (Rayman Legends), over-hyping a game before its delay to go completely silent on it afterwards (Watch Dogs) and setting a release date for a game in order to push pre-orders before delaying it (Batman: Arkham Knight).  These trends alienate the loyal fans that look to support these games through pre-orders, buying collector's editions and paying for season passes by literally pulling the rug out from under them.  Playing with the emotions of the most passionate fans is an easy way to sour their opinions towards a certain game or game company.  Developers and publishers need to let delays be for the betterment of the games and learn to keep their audience's emotions in mind when announcing and handling these crucial situations.

Although it may be a tough pill to swallow, delays are an inevitable part of the video game industry.  They are needed to handle the unpredictable nature of game development, but gamers, publishers and developers all need to find better ways of dealing with them especially as development costs rise and the ability to connect with one another becomes more available.  As a gamer, it is disappointing to see the list of major releases in 2014 dwindle every month as many get pushed to 2015, but all hope is not lost.  There are many other options for gamers to spend their valuable time with than just the larger triple A titles including a wide selection of value-priced downloadable games or a vast backlog of games missed out on from previous years.  While 2014 may be a soft year for major game releases, best use the extra time to discover brand new experiences or rediscover those you missed out on from years past.  The games we are all excited about will eventually see the light of day; we just have to be a little more patient.

E3 2013: Ubisoft Press Conference Impressions

Aside from their consistent problems finding a suitable host for their conferences, Ubisoft has had some of the best showings at E3 the last two years.  With games like Rayman Legends, Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed IV in their corner, many were looking forward to what Ubisoft would show off this year at E3.

Well to sum things up, Ubisoft knows how to end a press conference.  Sadly, they do not know how to do much else because this conference was a definite step back from years past.  It was not good or bad, it just was right in the middle.  Only a few things Ubisoft showed really stuck.  The rest went in one ear and out the other.  Maybe these reactions were due to the lack of actual gameplay demos or the continued presence of Aisha Tyler, which was a black hole that sucked plenty of good out of this conference.  Also Ubisoft's conference was significantly hurt by the exclusion of Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed IV demos in favour of showing them at the Sony Press Conference.  There is no point in having your own conference if you are not going to showcase your own games especially the two biggest titles in your 2013 line-up.  As much as Ubisoft under delivered, it was not as bad as the EA conference.  There were a couple of good points.  The demo for Reflections newest driving game, The Crew was really good.  The inter connectivity of the world and the instantaneous multiplayer were impressive.  There are a few questions this writer has for The Crew, but personally I am intrigued.  The game that saved this conference was the newest Tom Clancy game known as The Division.  The Division had a similar set-up to Watch Dogs' set-up a year before.  Ubisoft had the audience at the conference and at home on the edge of their seat trying to decipher what it was.  The Division is an open-world third-person shooter with RPG elements.  It is set in a world that has spiraled into to complete and utter chaos after the collapse of the stock market and society as we know it.  Set with the task of surviving, the player teams up with others in this persistent massively multiplayer world scavenging items, collecting upgrades and gadgets and fighting off threats to your survival.  While I personally would have loved to see more about Rainbow Six: Patriots, The Division looks like a great new extension of the Tom Clancy universe and another great game in Ubisoft's huge library of games.

As much as The Crew and The Division captured our imaginations, those two games were not able to save Ubisoft's conference from mediocrity.  The absence of the Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed IV demos and the lack of demos for a slew of trailers beat Ubisoft into one of their most lackluster showings.  At least, this year's press conference was not even close to their infamous 2010 conference. 

Grade:  C-