Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all struggled to bring their best to this year's E3

Jun 14, 2014 00:45 GMT  ·  By

In the wake of Microsoft's, Nintendo's and Sony's presentations during this year's edition of the E3 gaming expo, many voices are clamoring for a definitive winner to be officially declared.

The question of "who won E3 2014" is on many gamers' lips, and, while some consider Sony to have completely blown the competition out of the water, there are others still who maintain that Nintendo's surprising resurgence stole the show.

Speaking on the Xbox Wire, Microsoft's gaming division head Phil Spencer said, "We saw amazing games from innovative creators, developed for Xbox, Sony, and Nintendo. Some people have asked who 'won' this week and the answer is simple–the gamers. It's wonderful to see our industry healthy and delivering what we all want – great games."

Showing sportsmanship as always, Spencer is well aware that each of the players has their own bag of tricks, on the Xbox side consisting of several platform and timed exclusives planned for the near future, in the form of Project Spark, Sunset Overdrive, Forza Horizon 2, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Crackdown and Scalebound.

Sony, on the other hands, looks at least evenly matched, with LittleBigPlanet 3, Bloodborne, Uncharted 4, the Grim Fandango remake, The order: 1886, and The Last of Us Remastered looking to boost their line-up of exclusive playables.

Nintendo is struggling to play catch up, but it's positioned better than it has ever been since the Wii U was launched, with its fans looking forward to Super Smash Bros., Splatoon, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Code Name: Steam, and Bayonetta 2 in the near future.

Nintendo had a pretty bad start with the Wii U, and their 3DS is not in a much better state outside Japan, especially since the company is currently focusing on making new games for the Wii U. While that's not a bad thing at all, it seems like too little, too late, as apart from colorful childish games that mainly play on nostalgia, the platform doesn't have much depth.

Microsoft had a bunch of problems with the Xbox One, especially considering the revisions in policy it underwent before launching the next-gen console and the other instances of second-guessing themselves, such as marketing the Xbox One as the "all-in-one" device that offers a completely unique experience due to the integration of the Kinect, and now deciding to strip the sensor from the console.

Xbox One vs. Wii U vs. PlayStation 4
Xbox One vs. Wii U vs. PlayStation 4
Sony has been the golden boy so far, their hardware sales outstripping the competition by far, having a much more attractive price point, and supposedly sporting more rugged specs. The company has managed to bring a ton of indies to its platforms, and they plan on continuing doing so. Then, the instant game collection was another strong point for their fans, delivering free games for every platform.

In addition to this, Sony has also secured early access/betas and exclusive content for many big names that are coming in the next 12 months, and taking into account the large number of indie and free games it's adding to its platforms, it's positioned really well from the point of view of the games it has to offer.

Microsoft has started on the back foot in the next-gen war, but at the same time they're fighting really hard to stay competitive (dropping the Kinect, the "gold tax" on media apps etc.) and to catch up to Sony. And, considering that the PlayStation 4's big guns are coming a bit late to the party, they have just the opening they need to mitigate their bad start, especially since it seems like Phil Spencer is poised to turn things around for Microsoft's console.

The PlayStation 4 is considered to be better in terms of raw power, and people are saying that games come out graphically better on Sony's platform, but for now it's too early to really tell.

Sony is working on PlayStation Now, the gameplay streaming service that will deliver beloved PS3 games on the PS4 (and other devices as well), based on Sony's Gaikai technology.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is working on something much bigger, in the form of cloud computing aiding in the real-time rendering of its software products, which could become a real game changer by itself.

Nintendo is keeping pretty quiet, but they're receiving a lot of love lately, and both their fans and the press are always talking about them with excitement, even though some people don't think they will be able to become as big a player in the next-gen console wars as either Microsoft or Sony.

Competition breeds innovation and better-quality services, so, in the long run, the more the companies struggle, the better off we are.

With Steam OS looming on the horizon and the never-before-seen marketing push from Valve, things are definitely looking good in this aspect.

So, who do you think 'won' this year's E3?

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Xbox One vs. Wii U vs. PlayStation 4
Xbox One vs. Wii U vs. PlayStation 4
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