Nintendo had the best showing. But it was a weird one.
When you list the games they showed - Mario Maker, Pokemon, Dragon Quest, Zelda, Astral Chain, Fire Emblem, Luigi's Mansion, Animal Crossing, etc. it looks incredible.
But I wasn't blown away and when you look at the games more closely, I think I know why.
We had a presentation for Mario Maker recently and it's out in a couple of weeks. We got a Pokemon direct last week. Dragon Quest was announced last year and is already out on other platforms. Zelda was dated, but we already knew about it. Astral Chain got its big reveal months ago. Fire Emblem has been delayed and shown multiple times. Animal Crossing got delayed. Luigi's Mansion still doesn't have a date.
All of this is to say that they've got a load of great games in the pipeline, but mostly nothing totally fresh or exciting.
We've seen a lot of these games before (some very recently) and perhaps more importantly, we could have predicted almost all of them.
It reminds me of Sony a couple of years back - you looked at their E3 and saw the likes of God of War and Spider-Man and couldn't help but be impressed. But they had announced those games the year before so they didn't pack quite the same punch.
When you have multiple directs throughout the year, it's hard to generate the same kind of pop at E3 - particularly if you've shown the game off just a week or so before.
Watching Banjo and Kazooie make a long-awaited appearance in Smash, getting a glimpse of a BoTW sequel and the sheer volume of quality games on the horizon gives Nintendo the win for me.
But I thought, a couple of surprises aside, it was very predictable. The next six months will be great and I expect more reveals later in the year.
I've watched a lot of treehouse stuff and the games look awesome, so I'm a happy Switch owner, but I wasn't on cloud nine when the direct finished.
It's the standout conference of the year and a really solid showing. But the competition was very poor.
MS didn't do enough for me, while the EA show was a disaster.
I felt Ubisoft had the best individual reveal with Watch Dogs. A 10-minute gameplay demo showcasing some ambitious systems, a talking head explaining the ideas behind the game and a follow-up trailer, which announced the release date. The rest of the show was hit and miss, though I always admire Ubisoft's weird and quirky shows.
Square Enix did well, Bethesda didn't really.
Overall, it's been pretty lacklustre but not terrible in my opinion.
