Izuno

1) Saw the Batman Arkham Knight demo...as a fan I felt serviced. At the end I felt like shouting "take my money, please" 2) Witcher 3...oh man looks good ever more so after watching at Warner booth. 3) Played a bunch of stuff at the Nintendo booth. Splatoon was oddly fun but is it worth a whole game? 4) Smashbros DS. Yes, but I don't play 3DS games. 5) Mario Maker. About f'ing time! 6) Evolve. Played it. Man is it fun. Really...just damn fun. 7) Bordlands Pre Sequel - it's borderlandsier. I'm a fan. Low G is their answer to mech suit jumping. But with that Borderlandsian humor/v.o. Personally, it will likely have my money. 8 ) CoD AW: it's a CoD game for sure. With mechsuits! 9) Destiny. ........................put this way I'm probably going to see it in the next couple weeks at Activision in their "clean room" for PR/press/analyst/etc. demos. Or so they tell me. Maybe I'm dumb but from watching it at E3 I don't get the game yet. I get the awesomeness of Bungie's ability to create a universe and all, but I need to get up close with this thing. I'm sellable but just not sold yet. (Waiting to be proven soooooo wrong.) 10) Playstation TV. Definitley interesting if it works. Not so sure about how it fits with my PS3/PS4/vita yet (haven't reviewed all the features yet) but I'm cautiously optimistic. 11) Killzone DLC ... 4 player coop. Killzone fans: this looked really cool. And it's got IR: That's two years in a row he was demoing Killzone Shadowfall! 12) Wargaming.net: no new games to announce but they are making so much money (mostly on PC, mind you) that they had a balls out massive booth again. 13) MGS V...saw a little inside the booth but not getting the big dog/pony show until tomorrow. This may be the first MGS I actually attempt to finish. 14) AC: Unity. Saw it up close. Didn't play. I'm not really that big a fan of the series but those of you who are should be pleased. 15) Speaking of AC, LotR Shadow of Mordor is more impressive than I was expecting. 16) LoZelda for WiiU was fucking stunning. Wow. 17) ...and Hyrule Warriors, must admit I didn't know about this until Tuesday. Hilariously makes sense now that I saw it up close. ...and I'm spent. Might take the Nikon tomorrow to take some "real" photos...so...tired...must...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz PS...I have some themes for the show which I will try to post Thurs night. One is sooooo hipster.

On R6 Siege...I didn't realize at first that it was a recording of people playing the game, not ingame voice over simulating what a hostage rescue scenario would be like. IOW, my first reaction to the VO was "WTF this is way to casual. Kinda like The Division." But then it made more sense that it was the voices of gamers playing the games and Ubisoft wanted you to get that. Except they were a little to formal. Arg, tough to get that right. tl;dr: looks sweet.

This. MGS has always been a series u love or u just don't see the point. Once u get it it hooks you despite Kojima-san's eccentricity. His trailers work the same way. Coming 1984. What balls. Love it.

Common' DICE, don't let me down!

Best part was the use of the word "minge."

Oh...meanwhile any of you showing product at the, er, show? I have a ton of meetings but built in roam-floor time so let me know and I'll come visit. Otherwise happy to do any meetups when possible.

Yeah the MSFT conference didn't excite me terribly. Though I don't expect many people to be wowed by everything shown. Clearly they got the message to talk about games games and nothing but games. And btw, "thank you for your feedback." LOL Meanwhile, I'm less excited about Sunset Overdrive now. Maybe I'm totally wrong on this but I dunno. What else: - Halo love for the fans. - Advanced Warfare had no Kevin Spacey. - Capcom has a sense of humor - Platinum games bringing you big monster battles a la all their recent games...except scale armor. - The Division...same casual female in-game sidekick. "Hey I'm getting shot. It would be cool if you guys took them out." (not an actual quote...just paraphrasing the tone). Meanwhile I'm not really into the vfx in Ubisoft games with how it gives you all the meta information. It fits better in this but I've always felt it a little weird in Assassin's Creed. - Speaking of AC, AC Unity setting is interesting to me cause wtf we haven't had much gaming in French revolution period. 4 player coop? Sure, sounds great except I never play that but good for the series - I'm up for another Tomb Raider game after the recent reboot. Sign me up! - Evolve looks interesting but I think it will be relatively niche even if it does a great job at what it offers. There are only so many gamers up for that - Wait no BF shown? I did like how sunset overdrive poked a lot of fun at crate cover shooters and soldier gameplay - Dragon Age Inquisition, a potentially excellent sequel in an excellent series I have yet to touch Eh...tired of typing...on to next conference...zzzz....

Thanks, Mikey. I used the term "Joy Puke" in a meeting last week and got that "wtf who are you" look from completely respectable suits. Meanwhile, I'm a sucker for another Borderalands game. Fun trailer:

Damn, USA is going to dominate its pool. There's not a single team that will pose any challenge to it. First off, Germany-

USA is going to definitely.... ....participate in the 2014 world cup.

Got pissed at some pre-birthday drink-a-thon? Anyway, HB Thrikanator!

I'm only in book 2 of the...uh...books...so I didn't know which way the was going to go. This may have been the most devastating episode yet for me as a viewer because

I'm still playing on Xbone. I have to admit matchmaking got pretty rough for a while when (to me) it felt like every match was totally lopsided in terms of vets vs. noobs balance but in the last couple weeks I've noticed it seems to be better. Keep up the good work, Respawn... MP balance is always harder than it looks.

Breaking Godzilla

INSERT GAME DVD INTO MY BODY NOW.

Yeah I'll be there. Book your appointments now!

Man...this is marketing of the year so far. edit: Reasons to believe below. Hope he's right.

I dunno...I liked this trailer :-)

Yep yep and yep. Also... I dunno, I still love the show but they better not go all Lost on us and just drag on. I want epic closures!

I finally saw it for the first time. On an airplane. Next to a 4 year old watching Frozen. She asked me to plug her headphones back into her display system...constantly. It was epic.

Yes.

This is why I post things like this here....always good analysis from multiple angles. The way my colleagues and I view it, we see that the notion that there is a bubble is correct, just not 100% correct. Certainly there are unsustainable practices in F2P, but as you guys have mentioned there are some games doing F2P right, or at least better. We don't see mobile F2P as a giant bubble that will destroy itself, rather we see a lot of shakeout as gamers get sick of the grind that many F2P mobile games become. In other words, Farmville etc. on Facebook was the hot, cute new thing but people got burnt out of it. It will happen again in mobile and it will likely get harder and harder to make big money (by as many companies) in mobile F2P unless the companies simply offer more actual gaming value...which gets harder and harder. tl;dr: Market forces and competition will hopefully weed out the weak, but that doesn't necessarily mean the thing you hate is the weak. Mobile F2P isn't going to collapse just yet but parts of it may spectacularly flame out. Get the popcorn!

Some seriously good thinking here: http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/9/5699058/free-to-play-mobile-candy-crush-the-room My favorite part: " Henry Ford invented the first production line and the first affordable car, and once said "If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses". The quote is mythical, but delivers more truth about creative work than a million pages of factual user data. "

THIS.