... because the likelihood of those expected next-generation games that were not seen today at Sony's press conference just shot up in chances that they will be seen when Microsoft's console is unveiled.

I missed half of the conference due to work, so excuse any mistakes I make in my following predictions.

The two biggest names that were MIA in the conference that come to mind are EA and Epic Games. EA pushed hard for the PS3 during the lead-up to it's release, but found more success on the 360. This time around EA might take their big swings on the Xbox platform. While people are currently pretty cold on any of EA's offerings, it's hard to deny that they do have a stable of potential content to release next generation. DICE has Battlefield, Criterion has Need for Speed (but more hopefully Burnout), and Bioware has whatever RPG they're working on. It would be a good opportunity for Microsoft to jump in and get the mindset that these games are "Xbox games," like the perception Call of Duty has. Then there is also EA's publishing deal with Respawn Entertainment, who's heads have good relations with Microsoft. It's been a couple of years since the formation of that studio, so they could have something to show.

Then there is Epic Games. Epic has already announced Fortnite (currently PC exclusive), and there has been talk about Epic Games getting out of game development and solely focusing on supporting Unreal Engine 4. That is all hearsay at this point, but lets assume it's true. After all the problems UE3 had on the PS3, I would have thought Sony would make it a priority to come out and say the next generation Unreal Engine will work extremely well on the PS4. This makes the complete absence of Epic a bit suspect. I think Epic would be foolish to not have their engine work well on PS4, but I can imagine an instance where they go out on stage during Microsoft's conference and tout how UE4 is particularly optimized to work on the next Xbox.

Of course Sony has E3 to show more games, but still it's fun to speculate what Microsoft has up their sleeve. What else is there to do until the new console are released? Play current games?!

The PS4.

mmmmmmmm.... aahhhh... mmmm... Drive Club... aaahhhh!

The Phantom Pain thingy, I would have expected that there

Epic games were there with their demo engine thingie, i think you did miss that.
saints row was missing

@andorski said:

I wouldn't call it a complete absence, given the presence of the UE4 tech demo. That said, I was surprised that they didn't get someone from Epic to come on stage, if only to pay lip service.

I'm also somewhat surprised by the absence of Naughty Dog; Uncharted was such a big hit for Sony that I'd have expected them to make an appearance despite The Last of Us's impending release.

@funkasaurasrex Naughty Dog's absence was probably the most surprising to me.

I also wouldn't read too much into Epic not being there.

Mark Rein was talking to Geoff Keighley after the show and he seemed really happy with the PS4 but of course he couldn't commit to any game announcements. Geoff tried to egg him into saying the PS4 was more powerful than the next Xbox but he didn't bite.

I still want to know what is up with The Last Guardian and Final fantasy Versus 13.

@grimluck343 said:

I've heard that Naughty Dog is now a two-team studio of sorts (after Uncharted 2, one portion of the studio made Uncharted 3 while another (smaller) portion started working on The Last of Us), but I still find it hard to believe that Naughty Dog is going to have a game ready for holiday 2013. Even with two teams, releasing two Naughty Dog games within 6 months of each other in the same calendar year sounds crazy. Whatever they're working on besides The Last of Us has to be coming out in 2014 at the earliest.

Whatever it is, maybe it's too early to show any of it, because yeah, if they had something to show, it really is the kind of game you want developers to talk about at this event, and would be a good "looks just like a movie!" showcase. Probably would've fit better than Killzone.

I'm not sure why Naughty Dog's absence would be surprising seeing as how they have a PS3 game coming out soon and wouldn't be ready to show anything for the PS4 yet.

@bisonhero@hidys Just for lip service. When you have all of these developers talking about how orgasmic the PS4 is to develop for it seems odd that Naughty Dog is nowhere to be seen. I'm not saying they needed to show off a trailer, just be there talking about how excited you are for PS4.

Last Guardian is a big one...at this point one would think that its been delayed in order to be ported up to the ps4. I just wonder when we'll see some new info on it, maybe e3?

Folklore 2 #wildestdreams

@grimluck343: Now that I think about it wasn't someone from Naughty Dog in that developer montage thing?

No PS4 at the PS4 announcement ? WTF. I guess Sony hasn't quite figured out how they are going to get all that hardware in a sexy small box and keep it cool yet.

I could care less about games that are further away from release than the system. Sorry, all these game demos start looking the same after a decade, just with better textures. You can talk about stupid motion junk and phones apps but who cares when they are used by 1 in 20 developers and made interesting every 1 in 100. Same for spamming youtube with idiotic gameplay videos, just what we need more of. Also don't care to hear your preach about how cool downloadable games will be when we know your motive is to kill off gamestop and hold game prices hostage at the only store in town - yours.

Oh, doesn't it all sound like utopia. I would have been more impressed if Sony walked out, plopped down a PS4, shot a spotlight on it and walk off.

The PS4 cpu better be a lot faster than 1.6Ghz or they are in some serious trouble.

@morbid_coffee: an actual PS4 and a killer app. Half of the games shown will be out on the PS3......and the exclusives are just blah

The console, price, online features, and launch games.

@grimluck343: Ah, right. Are you sure they weren't in that developer reel somewhere, with Tim Schafer and everybody?

Well, there wasn't a PS4 there, for one.

But for another, still no sign of The Last Guardian. We've been told they're still working on it, but is it going to be a PS3 game? PS4 game? Will we be playing it when we're capable of jacking our minds straight into our PS7s?

@bisonhero@hidys I didn't see them but I wasn't paying super close attention either.

the new xbox

I didn't see anything about compatibility with the ps3, but I might have missed it.

EA is the only thing that was glaringly missing, especially with all of the talk about how Battlefield 4 was definitely going to be there.

A new Mario game. It would have been interesting to see thousands of Marios falling from the sky and pouring all over buildings.

KAZ HIRAI.

Most disappointing part of the whole thing.

I guess they're saving him for E3. Though, a Sony hardware announcement without him just felt a bit wrong. Like they were cheating on him with other presenters.

Persona 5.

Females developers.

Guys. They still need to show stuff at PAX and E3.

A JRPG, actual game play footage, the PS4 itself, a price point, and no The Last Guardian.

It makes me wonder...what if the price point is $600 dollars instead of $500 dollars.

Sony was originally going to have Kaz, but after seeing an empty bottle of Jack on the table and a puddle of vomit on the carpet in the green room, they had to grab somebody else to do it. They also grabbed a dodgy guy in the car park and told him to try and read the teleprompter.

I wanted to see more of the system UI, I hope they keep the XMB for the most part, it's so much better than the 360 dashboard especially after Microsoft's numerous updates making them worse, every update after the first NXE one has been bad.

I would have liked to see some Konami and Atlus, but I guess that's for TGS or E3.

Dark Souls 2.

I'm completely expecting it to be at, at least one of the press conferences at this year's E3.

I feel there was a specific lack of Blu-Ray. Maybe I'm reading to much into it, but I suspect that might be something with the digital distribution, maybe day-one releases this generation?

Obviously the box itself, but that wasn't really surprising.

They didn't elaborate what their vision for the light-bar was and what it could really be used for.

And probably most importantly, price. This thing will potentially be expensive as hell, so I'm not quite on yet.

It could be that the next gen CoD and BF weren't ready in time for the announcement. Or that they are saving it for a later reveal. There's not even a snowballs chance in hell that they will be Xbox exclusive so why would Sony feel the need to feature them in what most people thought would be a hardware announcement. The "meeting" turned out to be very game/software centric, but EA is undeniably a major developer that every platform will court.

The game that I thought would appear for EA is MLB The Show. It is the most popular baseball game available and a Sony exclusive.

The bit that I find odd that WASN'T shown was Beyond: Two Souls. What gives? They get David Cage up there to show a tech demo of a disembodied balding old man? The demo was impressive but when you have a game that is supposed to launch this year and be among the most prominent Sony exclusives you would think there would be some game footage. I preordered the game a while back and I'm not even sure what console its going to be on.