E3 2014: We're Talking Over the EA Press Conference

Very content light from EA this year. Too many "conceptual demos", not enough actual games announcements.

Another slam dunk for EA...

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Was it just me or was this presser mostly sports with a lot of sides of "look what we're working on for late 2015, maybe 2016"? Oh and The Sims. Can't forget The Sims.

EA, stay back after class.

I can tell you did all this work last night, are you having problems at home?

EA = Early Alpha

I'm surprised the guys "Wow'ed" the Star Wars tease. Time and time again - remember FF8 real time on the PS2? Killzone? Watch Dogs?

Also, no one over the age of 12 should say, "The feels."

I can't hear anything on any of these videos. I went to youtube and tested my sound and everything. Someone please help!

I'm suddenly hungry for a cookie.

Thanks, Alex.

I don't suppose someone has the time stamp for the PGA game?

That Mirror's Edge 2 segment was really disappointing. The live GB reaction to the stream freeze was great. The shown footage was bad.

ALL THE FEELS

Jeff saying that the close quarter maps in BF3 were the unpopular ones is kind of hilarious.

Anyone who played the game a few weeks after release knows that 80% of the servers were 24/7 "the very compact, small, death funnel map".

And I loved the close quarters DLC. And I don't think I was the only one. The BF destructibility becomes super rewarding when you start in a clean office space and then just wreck it. I'm not a huge battlefield fan, so its like I'm trying to defend it to death, just trying to give some perspective from a person who played it for at least a couple weeks.

HOLY SHIT I HAD NO IDEA PAUL GLANCEY WORKED AT CRITERION BUT I TOTALLY RECOGNISED HIM FROM THAT SIZZLE PIECE

@zelyre: i mean that stuff was running on high end pc and also this is 2014 not 2006 so

EA need to get their shit together and work with more studios. I feel like DICE are being spread out across too many projects right now and it shows in their products. They're working on Mirror's Edge, BF4, Hardline as well as with anyone else using Frostbite. I do suspect that their main focus is Battlefront though. EA are probably one of the most boring publishers right now though simply relying on annualised sport franchises and existing brands. I'm surprised they're even letting DICE go ahead with Mirror's Edge 2 seeing how poorly the original game sold. I'm sure next year will be a better show for EA as they'll actually be able to show off a new Mass Effect, new Bioware IP, actual Mirror's Edge 2 gameplay and a million sports titles but for right now, they have Dragon Age and after seeing the Witcher 3, it doesn't seem nearly as interesting.

That hurt my feels.

Put it this way. If you own EA stock, you might wanna sell now, lol. They are a complete mess it seems. Did they plan this presser the night before?

I really want that Battlefront game to happen as well as future Mass Effect games, but man this conference highlights the dysfunction of EA.

So is every other game they show. There was 0 gameplay shown in that Star Wars demo. It was essentially, "We created assets and plugged those assets into this engine. Look at how the engine renders those assets."

Gameplay footage and In Engine Footage are two different things. Sorry, I'm not going to hop on the hype train of a game that's coming out two years from now.

Damn kids. Get off my lawn with your wub wub music and your twerkin'!

Wow. Hardline is way too much of 'just a mod'. Are people really going to buy that? Makes me sad.

Question -

Was that a Dead Space teaser with the cut just before showing Battlefield Hardline, or just a nod to the fact that they're the guys what made the creepy series with two amazing games?

For sure, they need much much more games in-between the AAA blockbusters and the exploitative iOS titles (ideally, Hardline would be that exact kind of game, but of course they're charging full price for it).

It also doesn't help that almost all of their biggest franchises had huge drops in quality with their previous iterations (ME, Dragon Age, Dead Space, Sim City, etc). That's going to be quite an uphill battle to get people to come back.

It's kind of amazing that they've survived over a decade of increasingly terrible PR disasters. The corporate level of that company must be an absolute nightmare to deal with.

I am super excited about Battlefront, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect. I hope EA is going to make sure the games are polished before released.

Huh. That was underwhelming.

And, oh man, that MOBA could not look less interesting or generic. Good luck with that.

Quick correction, @alex: You will hear AC/DC at least 3 times a night at any NHL arena. If you don't hear "T.N.T.", it's not officially a hockey game.

I don't care how snarky Jeff wants to be about Hardline, that seems pretty interesting.

Alex has an evil cookie death stare at the start. Look out Luigi.

Highlight: Jeff - "HAHA. Yeah! Fuck that guy!"

I liked a lot of what EA showed. Star Wars and Mass Effect.

Would Bruce Lee really be into blood sports for entertainment?

I'm playing it on PS4 and am enjoying it a lot. But I haven't played Battlefield 3 or 4, so maybe that's why. But I think it's incredibly fun.

All the stage flair.

@zelyre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgC9kHW-ZSw

What the fuck? Sea of Voices by Porter Robinson for a NHL Trailer? Hmmmm....

I love how they talk shit how bad the stream of EA is when it's all on their end. Nicely done.

Loved hearing Idris Elba's voice for Fifa, I did not look that up, but I'm pretty sure that it's Idris Elba.

After the relatively exciting Microsoft conference, that was a slow play and a hard sell. Ugh.

Man, this is depressing. How many times have we heard people lambast EA and Ubisoft about not taking a break on their franchises and now we have a year where they're clearly taking their time to properly produce these games but instead we get, "I think EA has some real problems" because they aren't ready to announce their games yet. Everyone knows production times on games are only getting longer, this is a good thing they aren't rushing them. I know it's easy to get caught up in the moment and see a press conference without any major game announcements as a bad thing but if you take a step back I think they're doing things right. None of it matters in a year or two when these come out and they're awesome and it's a little weird to see people lose sight of that.

@dezvous If every one knows that production times are getting longer on games, then how come the ONLY products EA showed this year, barring Dragon Age which I will grant you, were their most recent entries in series which now have yearly iterations and are being made on what one can only assume to be an eight-to-ten month development cycle?

I mean real as hell products. No one cares about or wants to see prototypes at press conferences (though the show floor is certainly the place to show them). It's particularly egregious, in the first year after the release of new consoles, when everyone is fervently awaiting new games, to say what amounted to 'PLEASE be excited about the news we will have about potentially interesting projects that will be released at their earliest a year and a half from now.' No one liked it when Sony did it early last generation, no one liked it when EA did it this year, and while I'm completely baffled that people liked it when Nintendo did it this year, at least they've only been on their downward trend for half as long as EA's own three-year extended obliteration of a large portion of their consumer base's interest.

EA tried to do something different this year by giving us a behind-the-scenes look. The problem is that they showed almost nothing, other than, 'we're working on games, please be excited.' It's fine to be excited for what they did show - hell, I certainly am - but they definitely had the most underwhelming 'media briefing' of this year's admittedly average E3.

This, more than anything, makes me feel like press conferences aren't the best venue to show of games far off in development.

The whole Sims part was excruciatingly awful.

@dr_mantas: ea did not want to give 1/2 mil $ for 3/4 cgi trailers for those games

Looking at the Bioware segment, I wonder how much Casey Hudson knew about him leaving a few months later...

Ugh....GET THE FUCK OFF THE STAGE!