Sunday Thoughts: E3 Is Over

It’s funny, that’s videogaming’s premier conference over and done with for another year.  Of course, E3′s not the only gaming show on the annual calendar, but, being American, it’s the biggest and although we’re looking forward to the Tokyo Game Show very much (very much) and, naturally, Gamescon, as ever, it’s E3 that everyone talks about.  We hope that we’ve given our readers as much coverage as we possibly could of the event, from up to the minute live news from the big three press events to full round-ups and rundowns of everything that counts as soon as we could

It’s been a funny old E3, though.  Starting off with Microsoft’s bizarre Cirque de Soleil powered elephant-em-up which managed to stage pre-recorded footage of Kinect with dancers and live animals without ever really telling anyone what the hell was going on, through to all manner of thankfully more mainstream conferences, there’s been plenty to discuss (and immortalise as animated gifs) this year for sure.  The highlights are obvious, but one thing stood out a mile for me this year, and that’s something we don’t normally touch on TSA: Nintendo.

From the stunning looking new Wii Zelda title so a rack of sure-fire hits from the Mario camp, Nintendo were on a role this E3.  And that’s not even counting what’s sure to be making some people at Sony feel very nervous indeed: the 3DS.  Essentially an amped up DSi, the 3DS goes above and beyond what we’d normally expect from portable gaming by creating a staggeringly impressive 3D display without the use of any glasses.  And then there’s the games: Ocarina of Time remake, Mario Kart 3DS, Star Fox…  Mouthwatering stuff indeed.

Of course, Sony didn’t disappoint – Tretton was on fine form and although I thought Kevin Butler’s appearance was more dull than dynamic (the time could have been spent showing off Starhawk or something, Sony) the rest of it was pretty hot stuff.  It’s clear that Sony had a massive amount of games through and although I’d have liked more time spent on the new titles and not just glanced over to make way for Move, the very fact that the likes of The Last Guardian were completely absent means that, at the very least, TGS could be one to watch.  And rumours of Uncharted 3 being shown behind closed doors are intriguing indeed.

On a similar note, the 25th of this month sees three whole years since our very first post on TheSixthAxis.  Three years is a long time for a volunteer site at the top of our game, so it’s (again) a heartfelt thank you to everyone that writes for, comments on and reads the stories that we publish – we’ve been told time and time again that we’ve got some of the best gaming writers on the internet, and the level of respect we’ve built up from publishers, developers and fellow journalists alike suggest we’re doing the right thing here on the site, at least some of the time anyway.

And although being completely independent and volunteer based gives us some benefits, we would like to make some money doing this.  I once calculated that if everyone that visited the site clicked on an ad for just one day we’d have enough to fund a wage for a year – my maths might have been out, and I’m extrapolating the clicks we did get on that day but you get the idea – it’s sometimes frustrating, sometimes really, really hard work but we’re always doing this because we enjoy it.  The moment we all don’t enjoy what we do here, the site shuts down because it’s not worth it.

So, let’s keep on keeping on, and here’s to another three years!