During an interview with GamingBolt, Micheal Pachter answered several questions about what he expects from Microsoft and Sony this year amongst other things. Micheal Pachter is a well known gaming analyst, that usually ruffle some feathers in the gaming community with his predictions. This year’s E3 Conference will be quite exciting, with both Microsoft and Sony expected to reveal new hardware, and Sony focusing on their upcoming PlayStation VR headset, we’re quite interested in what games they might show. It’s been rumored that Rockstar would show off the latest in the Red Dead franchise, and that we might see more of the upcoming Recore game from Microsoft. Games like Mass Effect have been delayed, and the upcoming sequel of Titanfall is scheduled to be released later in the year.
However Micheal Pachter wasn’t too excited about the upcoming E3 conferences, saying that ‘nobody’ should care about what Sony shows at E3, since they usually show off titles that doesn’t release in the near future. The example he used was The Last Guardian, which was showed off again last year after its been teased since 2006.
No, but I gotta say, if you ever want to look at the ten biggest disappointments from E3 of all time, they would all be from Sony’s press conferences. And by disappointment, i don’t necessarily mean something bad happening at Sony’s conference- I mean something was announced which never showed up. I remember the PlayStation 3 press conference, before the PS3 ever came out, and they actually showed one of the characters from Red Dead Redemption… it was clearly a western from Rockstar, and Read Dead Redemption came out in 2010.
Microsoft revealed that Gears of War 4 would release on October 11th this year, however we haven’t heard about any release date for both Sea of Thieves or Recore since they’re expected this year. Halo Wars 2 haven’t been confirmed either, and it’s troubling. With E3 around the corner we do expect most of these titles will get official launch dates. It’s not known if Microsoft will show off some surprises, but it’s highly unlikely, with no leaks happening so far this year. However we might be getting a new Forza Horizon game this year, and the upcoming Forza Motorsport Apex is set to launch in the near future.
With Sony focusing on hardware this year, we do expect them to show off God of War 4 after some game artwork leaked earlier, since Uncharted 4 will release in the next week. They might also show off The Last of Us 2 according to Micheal Pachter, but he wasn’t too keen on seeing it anytime soon.
So… who cares what Sony will show at E3 this year? It probably means it won’t come out some time in the near future anyway. So, they could probably showcase The Last of Us 2, and say that’s coming ‘sometime.’
With the Neo and VR taking all the headlines, when it comes to games this E3 might be a damp squib for gamers in general. After Microsoft shuttered some of their studios, and most of their upcoming games not being fully Xbox exclusives we might see a shift this year to where Microsoft focuses more on Multiplatform titles than exclusive games like we’re used to. When asked about whether Microsoft was aiming to get out of the console business with these moves to multiplatform, Micheal Pachter responded:
I think you said it backwards- I don’t think that they are trying to get out, I think that it is inevitable that consoles will go away eventually. So I would say that it’s fair to presume that after this console cycle, each succeeding console cycle will be about half as big as before. And the reason for that is not fewer people playing games- the reason for that is more people playing games. But they’re going to be playing games on other devices. And by devices, I think we’re going to continue to use our home television as the monitor, the display, for the game.
Well regardless of what the analysts say, this year’s E3 conference will be quite interesting to say the least. We’re already seeing an arms race on the horizon with Neo and the next Xbox, and we can only hope that we’ll have decent games to play on these upcoming devices. Grab the full interview in the source link above.
