Games as a Service

Games as a Service has never been quite as prominent as it is now. As a result of this, updates to existing games was very much a key focus of most of the big publishers’ efforts at this year’s E3.

EA spent the bulk of its time talking about new updates to Battlefield V and Apex Legends, Ubisoft are still releasing updates to Rainbow Six Siege and For Honor (games that are 4 and 2 years old respectively), and Bethesda’s main topic of conversation was how they’re making huge additions to flagship MMO titles The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76.

This definitely wasn’t the year for new IP’s…

Subscriptions

EA, Valve, Epic and Ubisoft all already have some version of exclusive store or ‘game launcher’. But this year, developers took it to the next level.

Just before E3 began, Google provided a big update on their new Stadia streaming service, which will be launching later this year. Further to this, Microsoft announced massive plans for their Game Pass service, including that it would be coming to PC in full. Ubisoft also took the next step in their plans for world domination and announced their very own subscription service (which costs £15 a month). No doubt there will be many more of these to come over the next few years. 

The problem is, as with Netflix/Amazon Prime, people only want to have one, possibly 2 subscription services at once – so how is this all going to realistically fit together? Time will tell!

Sequels

 As mentioned earlier, apart from a couple of the obvious ones: FromSoftware/George RR Martin’s Elden Ring and Bethesda’s Ghostwire: Tokyo and new multi-player game Deathloop, there weren’t really any huge surprises or new IP’s at this year’s E3.

Game publishers seem to be playing it safe, to the extent where all of the following games had sequels announced: DOOM, Chivalry, Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein, Dying Light, Luigi’s Mansion, Zelda: Breath of the Wild and even the Final Fantasy 7 remake to a certain extent.

Nobody wanted to take any risks this year, and it really showed.