There was no E3 – but Microsoft won it anyway | Opinion

There is at least one long-standing E3 tradition that has now outlived E3 itself: the picking of winners and losers from the event.

This is a distributed, largely subjective process of judgment and evaluation which has on some occasions been quite spurious and misguided, but at other times has genuinely set the tone for the competitive landscape of the year to come. Whatever failings ultimately sank E3 – and there were many, many failings – the show’s position on the calendar was no accident. It remains perfectly balanced right at the point when companies have locked down their holiday release schedules and are ready to start looking forward to the following year’s tentpole titles; with or without a trade show to anchor it, the start of June is always going to be a milestone games companies are focused on.

Consequently, it’s always going to be an opportunity to take the pulse and temperature of the industry’s market leaders – if not to declare outright winners and losers, then at least to get a sense of where we’re going in the next 12 to 18 months.

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