It’s that time of year. Time to break out the decorations and begin the celebration. The eve of our favorite annual holiday is upon us. Whether you are a fan of a particular platform or just love games in general. The Electronics Entertainment Expo has plenty of gifts for gamers of all types. Throughout the week we will be taking a look at each of the three major console manufacturers plus the three individual publishers holding press conferences at the show. Join us as we prepare for the latest peek into the future of our industry at E3 2017.
Finishing off our pre-E3 festivities is a look at the 3 individual publishers hosting conferences at E3 2017. This includes Bethesda, EA Games, and UbiSoft, plus potential news from other popular game publishers. All three publishers have had a rather eventful year since last E3. Bethesda had the Oculus lawsuit and have flexed the muscles of their legal team to hold down other developers who can’t fight back based on very loose interpretation of their copyrights. EA has had yet another game with a troubling launch, Mass Effect: Andromeda may be the biggest flop yet. And then there’s Ubisoft. Poor Ubisoft. Just the mere mention of Ubisoft and many gamers lash out with rage towards one of the fastest growing publishers in the past 10 years. If that wasn’t enough, Ubisoft has been in a very public battle over a very obvious hostile takeover bid by Vivendi.
All three companies will be looking towards E3 with hopes of putting their tumultuous recent past behind them. The best part of E3 is every body loves new games, and each of these three companies are poised to give us quite a few potential gems. Luckily for you, all three of these companies have a habit of teasing their products or flat out announcing their existence prior to E3 so we have plenty to talk about today.
We’ll be taking a look at the few things we already know, a few things we believe will be shown, as well as a few predictions, including at least one ‘crazy’ prediction from each of us. For the sake of staying unbiased and easing any confusion we will discuss all three companies in alphabetical order.
What we know:
Bethesda: We know a few things Bethesda will have at their show Sunday night. After debuting at their E3 show last year, Quake Champions will finally get a release date and a brand new trailer. We also believe that Bethesda will have at least two properties from The Elder Scrolls franchise. The big one being a marketing push for the newly released Morrowind expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online. The other title will be The Elder Scrolls Legends, a free-to-play collectible card game for PC, Mac and mobile devices. Thanks to a pre-e3 teaser we also know that two previously unannounced titles will be shown.
EA Games: EA issued a statement on their website recently leaving little room for predictions about what we will see at their show this Saturday. The heavy hitter will be Star Wars Battlefront 2 which will add a single player campaign in addition to the multiplayer elements from the previous game. Need for Speed: Payback brings the return of the popular racing series with a new Fast & Furious feel to the games story mode.
EA Sports will also be there to show off the newest entries for Fifa, Madden, NBA Live and NHL 18. Many eyes will be on the Switch version of Fifa which does not appear to live up to the capability of its big brothers on Xbox and PlayStation. EA will also spend some time showing off new DLC for last years holiday games Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1.
PC gamers will get a small treat, EA will have The Sims 4 on display. And finally EA will be making a big push to show off their offerings on mobile devices with new entries for Madden, NBA Live, The Sims and Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes.
Ubisoft: We know a lot about Ubisoft’s conference as well. Far Cry 5 and The Crew 2 were announced during a conference call in May. South Park: The Fractured But Whole was shown off last year and has recently had it’s release date finalized(hopefully it stays that way). Everyone and their sister knows Just Dance 18 will be shown. And unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve seen at least one of several leaks confirming Assassin’s Creed: Origins, which takes place in Egypt this year.
We also know a few things that you wont be seeing at E3 this year. Ubisoft has recently confirmed that Beyond Good & Evil 2 will not be at E3. Aisha Tyler, the host from the last few E3’s, will also not be part of the show this year. There will be a new IP most likely closing out the show, but we’ll talk about that a bit later in our predictions section.
What we ‘think’ we know:
Bethesda: We’re fairly certain that the two unannounced games teased by Bethesda are Wolfenstein: New Colossus and The Evil Within 2. If you remember back to last year, Bethesda posted an easter egg in their opening screen for a game titled New Colossus with no release date in a list with previously released games in a DOS style directory. Didn’t take fans very long to put 2 and 2 together to determine that this was a stealth announcement for a new Wolfenstein game.
The other title most likely to fill the second slot is The Evil Within 2 which was known to have been in development for a few years now. While Bethesda does have a few other IPs that they could be using right now, these two fit best. We’re predicting that Wolfenstein: New Colossus will be their short hype cycle game launching this November. The Evil Within 2 probably has a few more months of development left which likely leaves the game prime to fill Bethesda’s second favorite release window next May.
EA Games: EA does have a lot of projects in the pipeline, but we don’t think there are very many nearing completion. We know Bioware on a new project called Project Dylan and believe we may get a glimpse of this on Microsofts stage. Project Dylan is supposed to be BioWares answer to Destiny with a large shared online open world. We also know that a voice actor accidentally confirmed BioWare is working on a new Dragon Age sequel, though it may be too soon to talk about the game. The last game getting closer to being done is the Star Wars game being built by Respawn. This game may be another year from completion but the timing would be right for a teaser this year and full reveal next year.
Ubisoft: We only have one game in the Ubisoft stable that we are confident will make an appearance at E3 2017. The rumors are that Splinter Cell 7 will be making a return and will appear first on Xbox One. The new game will also bring back a familiar voice as the original Sam Fisher voice actor, Michael Ironside, has confirmed that he was in Toronto last year to work on the new Splinter Cell game. There is a chance this could be a 2018 game, but we’re pretty sure this will come out this holiday.
Predictions:
Because so much information is already confirmed for these three publishers the predictions section will be a bit light. As such we will be combining our predictions and crazy predictions. Going forward anything with 3 asterisks/stars next to it is considered our crazy prediction.
Bethesda: We’re pretty sure it’s getting close to time for Bethesda to at least tease a new Elder Scrolls game. We wouldn’t be surprised if there is a easter egg hiding in this years conference confirming The Elder Scrolls VI. We also do not believe that Quake Champions will stay PC exclusive. With Xbox promising mouse & keyboard support a Quake Champions port makes sense and doesn’t conflict with iD softwares desire to keep this game a precision twitch shooter.
We think it’s about time to start talking about Rage 2. It’s been a while and fans of the original are starting to ask what’s taking so long. Finally, some people are wondering if Bethesda will finally take the wraps off Starfield, and some feel this is the year to do so.
EA Games: Last year Ubisoft released a new extreme sports game, Steep, which had a mostly positive reception. Knowing how much companies tend to follow the same trends(i.e. there are 3-4 western themed games this year), we think it’d be a good time for EA to revive the Skate and/or SSX franchises. Imagine a new SSX game to compete with Steep using game play mechanics similar to Skate. BOOM! /thread. EA Wins E3 2017.
Ubisoft: We know Ubisoft is going to show off a new IP this year, but we don’t know what that may be. Or do we? We’ve been hearing a lot of rumblings that this years surprise game will be a pirate themed game that is unrelated to the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
***We think it would be silly to abandon the Prince of Persia franchise. A return of the cel-shaded Prince from the 2011 title would look really good on the Nintendo Switch, Ubisoft should make it happen.
***Where the hell is the Driver franchise? Ubisoft can’t sit on this one forever, it’s about time they show us they’re not abandoning the popular driving/heist game.
Let us know in the comments below what your thoughts/predictions are for these three publisher for E3 2017. Be sure to join us on our E3 2017 page during the entire week starting with Live @ EA Play on Saturday all the way through to Nintendo’s Spotlight on Tuesday. We’ll be chatting with you guys during each of the conferences all week long. A Twitch account is required to chat.