Chindie

That Battlefield Premium thing leaves a slightly nasty taste in the mouth. It just seems cynical. 5 $10 expansions, made purely because we know theres an audience who will need them if we release them. May as well be called Battlefield Cash-in.

I'll give E3 this year this, only on the second conference and we've about 3 great bits of music picked for the trailers and clips shown. A Perfect Circle for the Gears teaser, and EA so far have used Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky.

Madden. *brain off*

Respawn are working on something but nobody has a clue what, besides some blurry images they've released. Fairly safe to assume it's an FPS though. EA is on atm, showing off Gears of Dead Space.

Yep, thats my bet too. And the big screen should indeed solve, or go some way to solving, one of the issues the 3DS has, the battery life. Which is shite. It always should have had 2 sticks of course. Even if only to make the thing more flexible for the games it can play. Unfortunately it's now looking like that just won't happen - because so few games seems to make use of the add on second pad and so few of the things got sold it's unlikely to push them into putting up the cash to add it on, especially when they've has a terrible year financially and would immediately make the original model reasonably obsolete. An idiotic mistake. I'd have more faith in that console with a redesign and second stick. Ain't happening though.

Seems like Nintendo is announcing some sort of new 3DS. Nikkei has apparently discovered news of a 3DS with a 4.3inch screen. Now - full redesign, as Nintendo loves to do? Or new model ala the DSi XL? I'm going with the latter.

I agree there. All the franchises, even the ones I like, are feeling so tired. I don't think it's a surprise that the games I've enjoyed most in the last 12 months, have been either sequels back after a long absence (Skyrim, Mortal Kombat), or sequels that haven't been drummed into the ground (Batman Arkham City). There's a desperate need for new IP.

The thing is, most people seem to believe that Microsoft probably could, if they wanted to, have done a decent reveal on the next console this year - word is that the chipset was done a while ago and devkits have been around for a while now rumour has it. But because Sony are in a state, and because the 360 just keeps marching on, and because the economy is still ****, they don't need to. So they're taking their time. If nothing else, E3 this year seems like it's going to convince me that the Kinect isn't just bad, it's the Devil.

I dunno... the next Xbox is still possibly up to 18 months away, you could get out something new, if you'd been working on it already for a while, before the 360 goes on the back burner and I don't think it'd be the worst thing to do, franchises have survived over generations before now. But it just seems like Microsoft has no... innovation or imagination. They've got their core franchises and they do nothing with them besides put out new ones. Admittedly it doesn't help that I'm not too bothered about those franchises - I don't like Gears much, Halo does little for me. I like Forza, and it actually looks like they might do something new with that, but even that has question marks over it since they've not actually shown any gameplay yet. It doesn't help, of course, that this generation has been so long. Companies will take bigger punts on new platforms. But Microsoft just don't seem to care about their games any more. They've got their studios and say 'We need a new Gears, go', while they spend all their time pissing about with Kinect (which I'm yet to encounter a single soul who gives a shit about it) and media content deals, which are meaningless to the UK market. Microsoft is obsessed with making the 360 an all in one set top box, and sod the core use it has. It's not a surprise that Microsoft's conference was poor again, it basically turned out exactly as I said it would on the first page, and besides Smart Glass anyone could have guessed that keynote's layout 6 months ago. I guess the upside is next year will certainly see them push something new at us, a new console.

I think it'll be a 1600 myself.

The Microsoft conference was always going to be shit but good grief they managed to somehow make it so bland it was almost worse their now familiar 'Hey, Kinect is great!' and 'Media content is GREAT!'. There was nothing there that I could say looked exciting or new. And there was so much focus on Kinect (in most cases using it for voice stuff... why does it require a Kinect to do that, might I ask?) and media... I just don't care. I don't use my Xbox to rent films, I can't, really, use my Xbox to view all this sports and TV content they've got. I occasionally use the Youtube app (and since my Gold expired, I don't use that either) and the iPlayer is better done elsewhere. And the whole thing is such a mess to navigate and use now, I'm not encouraged to start using my Xbox like that... so I don't care about all this media shit. And seemingly neither does the rest of the core Xbox community of gamers. Microsoft's showings just get worse and worse. The highlight was the South Park guys coming on and acting like real people, and taking the piss out of all this interactive devices bollocks. Even the Smart Glass stuff... I mean, I can now use my phone to get details on the movie I wouldn't be streaming over Live, cool. I can do that anyway, because my phone has wifi!? And access to IMDB? But because I'm watching a film anyway, I wouldn't be looking up all the behind the scenes stuff in the first place.... Microsoft'll be coming dead last this year, again.

That would be an improvement.

My experience of working at Gamestation tells me that Dance Central was one of the more popular Kinect titles, and it's always reviewed well. They tend to push it at E3 because it also represents the 'girly' market, if you put your cynical hat on. Black Ops 2 to round it out. Usually the final thing of the show is a blow your socks off (or they expect to blow your socks off) teaser. This is just, well... COD, again. We already know Blops 2 is coming, they showed it a couple of months ago.

GiantBomb have a live stream. South Park game... yawn. And Harmonix increasingly flog a just about living horse, with Dance Central 3. Sigh.

HEY GUYS! REMEMBER ANGRY BIRDS? YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE FUNNER THAN ANGRY BIRDS? 3D ANGRY BIRDS WITH KINECT! *cries*

Ha, oh dear at the those new IPs. The first one looked awful, the Twisted Pixel thing was absurd even from a CGI promo, and the Gore Verbinski thing looked like knock off Portal. And now Resi 6. And Capcom made the poor decision of sending guys who can barely speak English. Still doesn't excite me.

Tomb Raider still sounds like a porn film. Also basically appears to be Uncharted. At least it's a bloody game though!

And theres the internet explorer announcement.

Bang, Smart Glass.

Forza Horizon needs to have gameplay shown before anyone is going to be sure about it. Done right, and with less of the hipster edge, could be great. But I bet they, instead, make into the franchise killer for the series. And heres the media shit.

I love how the Kinect is increasingly just becoming a glorified mic - everything EA just showed off could be done with a headset - the PS2 could do it! Oh look, Gears. With a great song.

Halo 4, with more than a little of the Metroid Prime about it. I really don't give much of a shit about Halo. At least they got it out of the way. Splinter Cell Blacklist, looking dull, dull dull. That series is dead. FIFA - made worse with Kinect!

Microsoft conference should be starting in about 15 minutes.

Game of Throne's finale is... well... pretty good. Has the distinction of being the first episode this series where Danerys was actually vaguely interesting.

How much would Begins in particular benefit from IMAX screening, that didn't have any sections shot on IMAX film did it? This film should benefit the most from it, IIRC there was talk of 40 minutes being shot on IMAX kit, as opposed to about 10 in TDK. The BFI London does monthly marathons of LOTR so, hell... maybe it could happen? Anyway... I'm hyped for seeing it but I've been more cautious than I was for TDK, I still have some worries, but increasingly it's looking like Nolan ratcheted up the action in this one and thought to hell with it all. I just hope he can leave the franchise with a serious bang. I'm still intrigued by Bane in this. I've never liked the character, but I want to see what they do with him. I like how they're building him up to be someone you should be afraid of. If they make him live up to the reputation he has (the man that broke the Bat) then that could be a good, good thing.