E3 2021 Hopes and Predictions
E3 2021 Hopes and Predictions
E3 is finally back and to be honest, as much as people want E3 to go away, there is an electricity in the air. Unlike last year when all event were either postponed or cancelled due to the pandemic, E3 was in the process of trying to figure itself out. The year off, hopefully will have worked in the favor of the ESA as they are back with an all Digital E3 for 2021. It’s nice to have everything under one roof, per se, as last year there was too many presentations and you were never sure if some were worth watching or not. This year most publishers are either working in conjunction with E3 or are doing their own presentation around the same time. It also wouldn’t feel right if we didn’t make predictions and hopes for what we want to see announced.
Nintendo E3 Predictions
It wouldn’t be summer without more Nintendo predictions that have been predicted and failed in many years past. Eventually, Nintendo will do the things that fans want but usually on their own time, which makes sense because they are fantastic position right now, almost in uncharted areas with only one system on the market, which is selling better than ever and doing it in their hybrid console blue ocean.
The last time Nintendo was in a similar position in a blue ocean was when the Wii was dominating as it wasn’t really comparing with what Sony and Microsoft was offering, however the major difference was that they also had a handheld on the marker with the DS to take away some of the pressure for making the right decision.
Looking back to our 2019 Nintendo E3 Predictions we swung for the fences with Metroid Prime Trilogy, 2D Metroid, possible 3DS Samus Returns port or even a brand new 2D Metroid, and we even thought Wave Race for the Switch might happen. There was decent reasoning too with the producer of the series teasing a possible series return on the switch and even in early 2020, Nintendo renewed the trademark for WaveRace, which doesn’t mean something is going to happen but they would like to keep the door open. There is also little to no competition in that area of the market and Nintendo does love Blue Ocean’s.
One of the major hurdles in the way of any Nintendo prediction happening is that Nintendo needs to do a Direct presentation. In 2020, for obvious reasons including E3 not taking place, Nintendo skipped doing a Summer Direct, which leaves the question: Does Nintendo have enough to offer in 2021 to do an E3 Direct? In the spring we received our first Direct in over 532 days and this means that there is no predicting what Nintendo is going to do.
However, the great news broke this week that on June 15 Nintendo will be doing an E3 Nintendo Direct and not to get overhyped but according to Nintendo it will feature roughly 40 minutes exclusively about software mostly releasing in 2021 and then followed up by a three hour treehouse featuring gameplay of some of these announcements
One announcements that won’t be happening around from Nintendo around E3 is that there will be no news from Team Cherry about Hollow Knight: Silksong as they preemptively announced that they would not be making any announcements around E3.
One of the most expected announcements is the new hardware Switch Pro or Super Switch or New Nintendo Switch or whatever the system ends up being called. Recently, Bloomberg ran another article by Takashi Mochizuki once again talking about the next iteration of the Switch hardware. Although, this time sources were saying that the announcement was imminent and could even happen before E3. The new highlights of the article was that it will begin production around July, it will be priced higher than the 299 US original, it will release in the early fall and it will eventually replace the standard model.
However, you don’t announce a new console without showing it off with some great new software. The two most obvious announcements are BOTW2 and Metroid Prime Trilogy. If the rumours are correct and Metroid Prime Trilogy has been complete for a while then constantly refining and polishing the title to look fantastic on the improved Switch would make sense.
I am making the same prediction that I made in 2019 with Metroid Prime Trilogy and a 2D Metroid because it has been too long since this series has seen some love even though it has never been one of Nitendos bigger commercial success. It also happens to be the 35th anniversary of the original Metroid and you have to assume that they will at least do something for Samus. The other reason why the predictions are getting repeated is because a broken clock is right twice a day and eventually these will have to happen.
Speaking of 35th anniversaries, it also happens to line up with the launch of the original Legend of Zelda. In addition to the already announced remaster of Skyward Sword, which is releasing in July and BOTW2, which is going to be announced alongside the new hardware, I am expecting a remake of one of the more popular 2D titles from the series: A Link to The Past. This remake will hopefully get the same love and care that Link’s Awakening got in 2019.
My last prediction of what sports title and when was accurate with Mario Golf, which is great because I can’t wait to sink hours into that game. This leads to the final Nintendo prediction and that we will hear from recently third party turned first party studio Next Level Games, who is the team behind the recent critical and commercial success Luigi’s Mansion 3. LM3 came out around Halloween of 2019, meaning that they will have been working on something for almost two years now. Although, with the success of LM3, its obvious a sequel is in development but, I think they are also concurrently developing something else.
Next Level Games will announce Punch Out Switch! This would be 12 years since we saw the last title, which was Punch-Out!! on the Wii, that also was developed by Next Level Games. The series made sense to make a return to the Wii because it was a platform that was built around being active and motion controls. It once again makes perfect sense for the series to make its long awaited return to the ring as more than ever people need to get active again. The game review extremely well with an average review score of almost 90% and it also had to sell well because it was soon after branded one of the Nintendo Selects titles on the Wii.
Dead Space Legendary Edition
It was just a handful of years ago that EA publicly declared that as a company, they had no interest in remasters and remakes. Their reasoning behind brining forward some of their beloved IP to a new generation of games who might have missed out on them the first time around was that it would mean that they had run out of original ideas.
Fast forward a few short years and EA has changed their stance on remasters and remakes, likely due to taking a wait and see approach. Waiting to see other companies be the canary in the coal mine and see if they can be successful. Clearly some things at EA have changed including the addition of Laura Miele, which has lead to Command and Conquer Remastered, Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Remasted and Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. All of these remasters have been released in the span of just under 12 months between June of 2020 and May of 2021.
One of the major reasons for hope is Laura Miele, who is the Chief Studios Officer at EA. A recent article in Bloomberg talked about how serious she is taking her role. When she first got the position, one of the first things she did was gather a focus group to figure out what people want from EA and one person said “I dont’t understand why you dont give players what theyre asking for?”
Since then, Laura Miele has tried to do just that. When the focus group asked for more Battlefront 2 content she assigned 70 people to the project. Skate 4 is now officially in the works. Battlefield took a well needed hiatus to retool, and now we have seen these remasters that fans have been asking for. Miele started work as a project manager in her mid 20’s for Westwood Studios in 1996, the original team behind Command and Conquer. This is someone who has been around games her whole professional life and understands what gamers want.
This recent deluge of remasters from EA indicate that the studio is now fully entrenched in the remastering process of some of their greatest IP. Sadly, most of EA’s biggest hits are sports or shooters that don’t require the treatment, however there is one glaring omission from the remasters that EA has left dormant for a while and that is Dead Space.
The last game in the series didn’t leave the franchise in an ideal place but that was back in early 2013. Even more absurd is that the oringal game came out in 2008, which means that the series is over 13 years old at this point, and now two generations of consoles removed.
One of EA’s avenues for releasing games is the EA Originals line, in which they apparently don’t take any profit, which after the releases of Knockout City and It Takes Two have nothing in the pipeline, and when looking at their most recent earning report, things look fairly slim as well with the exception of their usual suspects of annual releases. These titles include Battlefield 6, Madden, FIFA,NHL, F1 and PGA to name a few.
One of the biggest changes to gaming today compared to how they were in 2013 when Dead Space 3 was released and even farther back in 2008 when Dead Space was released is the realism that todays engines can provide with unbelievable lighting effects with HDR and Ray Tracing.
These are the key pillars to cranking up the tension in a survival horror game. Obviously, there are many other ways games have improved but these would go along way in sprucing up the series. Seeing how EA has become aware of what gamers want, it’s not a question of if Dead Space will return but when. Wishful thinking, it could be during their EA Play in July.
Update Predictions
Warzone Next Gen
Not all predictions need to be about expecting the unexpected but instead can focus on refining what is already available. Here are three update predictions for games that are already available and are already very popular.
Warzone has been growing steadily since its release in March of 2020 and recently Activision confirmed that over 100 million people have downloaded the game. Warzone has also helped drive the earnings of Activision way up as they reported 8.08 Billion dollars in revenue in the last fiscal year with 4.8 Billion of that coming from in game purchases, likely mostly from Warzone. This means that in micro transactions accounted for almost 60 percent of the companies total revenue and Activision is going to keep supporting the title
During a recent press briefing, Amos Hodge, Creative Director confirmed that the team is working on next gen updates that will include 4K/120, faster loading times and an FOV slider. Up until this point gamers on the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S have been playing backwards compatible version of the game, which do run smoother but still lack next gen features.
There are two possibilities for when this update will happen. The first will be at E3 where the company can make some kind of splash and hopefully steal a little attention away from Battlefield 6 that is getting announced on June 9. The timing is also aligning perfectly with the end of season 3, which ends on June 15 with season 4 expected to start the following day. This is all happening right in the middle of E3, so it makes sense.
The other option is that it will be released when the next iteration of Call of Duty comes out in the fall, but that will have been over a year plus from when the new consoles launched which would seem too little, too late to compete with all the new entries that will already have those features.
Siege Crossplay
Another stalwart in the live service shooter genre is Rainbow Six Siege. Which has been on console and PC since its release, however unlike Warzone, there has been no cross play for a few reasons. Crossplay isn’t the same desired feature that we have basically come to expect with almost every game that releases. The other major issue is that Rainbow Six Siege doesn’t use aim assist on consoles, which would likely give a major advantage to keyboard and mouse players.
However, Ubisoft has been very aware of just how much people want to be able to play with their friends, no matter what the platform is and the addition of cross play to any game makes much more financial sense. My group of close gamers are always looking for new cross play games to play because we all play on different systems and, it’s likely that we would give Siege a try due to how important communication is and there are likely many others like us. Ubisoft is aware of what makes financial sense as they are a publicly traded company.
Ubisoft has acknowledged that this is a feature that they planned to implement in the future but never committed any timeline to. However, it seems that Siege is now on the precipice of this feature coming to fruition as they posted on Twitter “Crossplay between PC and cloud gaming platforms is currently being tested. Tune into Ubisoft Forward on June 12th for more information on our plans for cross play and cross progression”
This would be a fairly lacklustre announcement if they just announced that crossplay is live between PC and platforms like Stadia as the majority of the gaming audience is on consoles. It has to be assumed that Ubisoft is aware of what gamers actually want and expect consoles to be included on June 12th.
12 Minutes release date
One of our most anticipated Indie titles is 12 Minutes, a time loop thriller, that is being published by Annapurna, which should tell you what you need to know. 12 Minutes has been in development for a long time, the official Twitter page for the game was created in 2014.
There have been too many subleties that have me thinking that 12 Minutes is going to be releasing this Summer. On April 1, 12 Minutes received is rating classification across the board from from PEGI to the ESRB. On April 6, Luis Antonio, creator of the game and former employee of Rockstar and Ubisoft mentioned that the last VO was wrapped. On April 30, announced they are at the final stages including bug fixing, localization and polish. Finally, on May 6, they announced they are officially one of the eight nominated games for the inaugural Tribeca Games Award, which you can’t submit something for an award unless it is completed.
With the recent social media activity from the studio I fully expect to see this game get a release date announced during the Microsoft conference that will be landing much sooner than expected in July. This will give highly anticipated title time to breathe away from the other triple a experiences that will be happening in the fall.
The other big piece of news is that to further our theory that Microsoft will stop at nothing to make GamePass as big as Netflix, 12 Minutes will be coming to Game Pass on release date. This will also help shore up the scarce release schedule that Microsoft currently has in terms of exclusive games coming to their systems. As of right now, all that we know about Xbox exclusives for 2021 is that Halo Infinte should be launching in the fall and I would expect to see 12 Minutes launch in the summer alongside The Ascent which already has a release date and Microsoft Flight Simulator. All three games that will be coming to GamePass.