E3 2012 took place June 5th-7th in the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown Los Angeles. IGN's E3 hub featured the live stream, all articles, videos, games, photos, and more. So make it your homepage and get ready.
Lacking any real new hardware announcements, and at the very end of a long hardware generation, E3 2012 was generally received as a show that presented "more of the same."
According to conventional wisdom, Ubisoft "won" E3 by showing off a wholly unexpected game: Watch Dogs. The game features a visually stunning open world game, with the clever hook of exploiting the vast network of technology that permeates our lives.
Epic was at the show with a big piece of next-generation technology, Unreal Engine 4, which will be used to power many games of the future. Likewise, Square Enix's next generation Agni's Philosophy demo attracted much attention. Running on the next-generation Luminous Studio engine, this is the same cutting-edge game technology that will be found in PlayStation 4 and the next-generation Xbox. John Carmack also turned up with some virtual reality tech running Doom 3: BFG Edition.
On the console hardware front, Nintendo again showed Wii U, but was generally panned for not announcing launch details or showing off a varied lineup.
Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime said: "We're about to launch a tremendously powerful system. A system that pushes out great graphics, a system that has an opportunity to do a lot of things. What I've heard the fan community say is, I want my Mario, I want my Zelda, and I want the best of third-party. And that's what we're looking to bring to consumers."
New Super Mario Bros. U and Pikmin 3 did impress, but E3 was not a huge win for Nintendo or for Wii U. Many left the company's conference expressing amazement that the company wasted such an easy opportunity to really impress its many fans. It took a third-party game, Rayman Legends, to really give pundits hope that Wii U will ultimately deliver.
There were all in all about 20 games at E3 that jounralists pegged as well-worth playing when they arrive, and every platform has its stellar offerings, even if platform-exclusives are rare. Next to Ubisoft, it was Square Enix that impressed with Tomb Raider, an origin story of one of gaming's most enduring characters. It's a third-person action game of the sort that is very familiar to us all. But its beautiful, tightly scripted and it gives us a central character that we can really care about, one with emotional depth.
Few games companies are willing to risk introducing new franchises at the tail end of a console generation. They all have new ideas, they're just holding onto them for when the new consoles from Sony and Microsoft are actually announced.
It is to Sony's credit that the company is giving PlayStation 3 owners two brand new games that won't be available anywhere else. Quantic Dream's Beyond: Two Souls is visually amazing and offers a female character of stunning depth. It promises to be one of the great playable stories. The Last of Us is a post-apocalyptic story of survival starring a grizzled man (Joel) and an innocent girl (Ellie).
At its conference, Microsoft only offered the latest iteration of an old franchise. Halo 4 from 343 and Gears of War: Judgment from developer People Can Fly.
On the PC gaming front, there were the impressive mech-shooter Hawken, SimCity and free-to-play shooter PlanetSide 2.
Portable gaming had a few interesting titles to talk about. On 3DS, New Super Mario Bros. 2 was described by game director Takashi Tezuka as designed to keep people playing until they collect a million gold coins. Also on 3DS, first details of Paper Mario emerged, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon looks great and Konami showed off Castlevania Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate.
Vita has not enjoyed a strong launch, and although Sony made some announcements about the machine, like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, a widely predicted price-cut did not emerge. However, the platform has been strengthened by the announcement of Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified and good showings for LittleBigPlanet, Orgarhythm and Assassin's Creed III: Liberation.
There was a large batch of visually strong multiplatform AAA games at E3. Electronic Arts had Crysis 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter and announced it had secured the rights to UFC. Activision came armed with The Amazing Spiderman and, of course, the impressive Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Other impressive entries included Assassin's Creed III, Star Wars 1313, Borderlands 2 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
There were jokes from E3 about this year's deluge of bows and arrows and helicopters, but there's always some sort of favored trick sweeping through the games industry. Undoubtedly, a lot of games are eye-catching partly because they are so violent. As developers become super-competent with the current generation, they create greater realism, including in the department of killing, an activity that features in hundreds of games.
The Big Games at E3 2012 list has all of the confirmed games that appeared at E3 2012.