I felt like this was the first E3 I've watched in several years where the featured companies seemed to feel confident that the traditional gamer audience is one worth appealing to as a continuing financial and cultural end in itself. That established gaming is not just this dying or embarrassing legacy tangential to whatever they want to believe is replacing it, i.e. casual, social, mobile, dudebro, freemium, whatever (a bunch of cynical terms I know, but you know what I mean) but an audience worth understanding and caring about in it's own right. Like they remembered it exists and how we can both get something we want out of caring.
Or, they at least the offered the pretense of caring, which is fine too.
Of all the great games shown the highlight for me was Lara Croft GO, surprisingly. Yeah I know, some spin off mobile crap, who gives a shit? Right? Despite how amazing many games looked it was the only one I saw on screen and thought to myself, "I want to play that right now" and was disappointed I couldn't. I think Hitman GO is the best native mobile game I've ever played and Square Enix Montreal have done a fine job so far of treating mobile gaming like a respectable platform in its own right, with its own quirks and potential. I get the strong impression that the greater SE corporation has set up the studio specifically to experiment with the potential of quality mobile gaming and I will be looking forward to and celebrating anything good they do. Lara Croft GO could be a combination of that attitude, the excellent design of Hitman GO, and a franchise I've enjoyed for nearly 20 years. Great stuff. If mobile is the future of gaming, as the industry keeps telling us it is, then I look forward to when a developer like this is the norm rather than the exception.
I was naively hoping for some Sony hardware refresh or price changes of some kind, particularly for the Vita (e.g. price drops on Vita memory cards, or a new device that ditches the propriety cards.) No dice.
It's basically a giant advert for the audience and a sales pitch for the shareholders, but that gets treated a bit like a music festival by gamers. I think there is a lot could be said about what that means regarding gaming culture, but I'm too optimistic about all the nice new toys the smiley men in suits promised us this year to really think about it.