E3 Week!

E3 has arrived! Well, almost for us here on the East Coast. The Microsoft Press Conference will start at around noon, so until then I am going to wildly speculate about what is going to happen in the next several hours.

But for those of you who don’t know what E3 is I’ll break it down quickly. E3, or the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, is an annual event for the game industry at the LA convention center. It functions as the largest press event for the industry. All of the current generation of gaming consoles and last generation have been announced during the conference.

In addition some of the biggest games of the coming year are announced or playable for the first time ever. So let the predictions begin!

1. Console Announcement’s

This current generation is coming to an end and everyone knows it. With the advent of the WiiU finally joining the PS3 and the Xbox 360 as an actual HD gaming console it would be in Microsoft’s and Sony’s best interest to announce their own new hardware.

The Windows 8 OS will be launching later this year, as will the Windows 8 phone & tablet. Since all of these will incorporate Windows Live Game center in some way shape or form, and a new console would be another logical step for them in order to coordinate the appearance and feel of all of these new devices.

Sony has caught up to Microsoft in a lot of ways this past few years, and the decision to drop the price of the PS3 was one of the best they ever made, yet I cannot help but feel like they are always one step behind. Xbox Live is still the powerhouse of connected gaming and even still the PSN has a long way to go to catch up. The development of new hardware would allow them to retool their framework and take more than a few hints from the obvious success of Xbox live.

2. Games

So many games have been leaked already to the public and press, but every time someone always has an ace up their sleeve.

Prince of Persia

The Prince of Persia franchise has floundered ever since the majority of the staff got up and left to go make Assassin’s creed. However, the POP franchise has a huge loyal fan base that has been oddly enlarged by the decent Hollywood blockbuster by the same name. It’s been two years since Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, which while being a decent game it lacked the magic that made the original trilogy so iconic.

Beyond Good and Evil

If a new Sony console is announce I can only hope that Beyond Good and Evil 2 will announced with it. Unlike The Last Guardian, (Sorry folks, I gave up hoping for that after Ueda left to go work on mobile games) I do believe that it has a chance of resurfacing and from the rumors I’ve read about, it would be as a title for the next generation.

Ok, back to work. The countdown has begun and I don’t have enough time to fill out the rest of my predictions. Look here tomorrow for a reaction to the conferences.