Nintendo unveiled the successor to the Wii at this year's Electronic Entertainment (E3) Expo in Los Angeles, while the biggest titles of 2011 and 2012 vied for attention on the show floor. Microsoft showed several new Kinect titles alongside an excellent line-up for the end of the year, while Sony let its new handheld console, the Playstation Vita, take centre stage. The quality of the games and consoles on show was extremely high, but there was no single standout.
Nintendo's new console, the Wii U, is compatible with the Wii remote controllers and fitness balance boards, but also has a new controller with analogue sticks and buttons on either side of a six-inch touch screen. It's a fascinating piece of technology, effortlessly usable and comfortable to hold. It makes it possible to keep playing even when someone else wants to use the television, continuing the game on the screen on your lap. It opens up interesting possibilities for traditional gameplay, too – using the screen in your lap as a tactical map in a shooter, for instance, or as a display for items or weapons on a select screen.
Nintendo also showed some unexpected potential – like using the touch controller to pilot a spaceship by tilting the screen around, shooting at friends controlling little spacemen on the TV screen, or using the controller as a shield to catch flying arrows. No games were showcased by Nintendo itself, though Ubisoft showed two shooter titles – Killer Freaks from Outer Space and Ghost Recon Online – that showcased how core genres worked on the Wii U. Nintendo is clearly trying to position its new machine as more attractive to the hardcore gaming audience, giving it HD graphics and technical specs to rival the Xbox 360 and PS3, but it's also trying to retain the Wii's appeal to non-traditional gamers as well. If it succeeds, it could unify the gaming audience in a way that no other console has before. A prospect that made it all the more disappointing that no exciting software for the machine was on show.
Having sold more than 10 million Kinect units since a record-breaking launch last November, Microsoft made controller-free gaming a focal point of its performance at E3. The emphasis was firmly on core titles rather than the sports, party and kid-friendly games that defined the Kinect launch line-up. Ubisoft showed Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, a tactical first-person shooter with Kinect voice commands and an interactive gun-building tool controlled entirely with your hands. EA's Mass Effect 3, the last in a blockbuster science-fiction trilogy, was also shown off as a voice-controlled experience, letting you select dialogue for the main character, Shepard, by saying the lines out loud. The latest in the Fable series was also announced – Fable: The Journey is a tightly scripted adventure that puts players in a horse and cart, using the Kinect controller to guide the horse, and includes a controller-free magic system allowing players to pull weapons and objects out of the air by tracing their shape.
Clearly more significant than the actual games, though, were Microsoft's announcements about Kinect's potential to turn the Xbox 360 into a controller and remote-free entertainment hub, including integration with the company's Bing search service. Being able to search your Xbox for films, music etc by saying "Xbox Bing Westerns" or "Xbox Bing Lady Gaga" sounds like a cool feature, but will it be readily adopted by an audience used to having something in their hands?
Sony's excellent end-of-year lineup for the PlayStation 3 included Resistance 3 and Uncharted 3. The handheld PlayStation Vita, meanwhile, continues to impress with its astonishingly high-resolution graphics – Sony also showcased the console's interconnectivity with the PlayStation 3, with a new game, Ruin, running on both the smaller and larger screens, in a coincidental echo of the Wii U.
The watchword of this year's E3 was change, through the assault on the traditional controller space from motion control, portable devices and touchscreens. Although the traditional big-budget standard-controller blockbuster clearly still has its vitally important place in the industry – as evidenced by the strong showing of Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 among many others – what E3 confirmed was that alternatives are proving to be much more than a fad.
Here are the best new games at E3…
