Who Won E3 2011? The Full Review Is Inside…

FINAL GRADE: C-

The showing of games like Gears of War 3, Modern Warfare 3 and the surprise reveal of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo 4 justify Microsoft’s continued presence at E3, but barely just. If only the awesomeness of the Halo 4 announcement had not been completely overshadowed by little kids waving their arms on stage pretending to play Sesame Street.

SONY

Sony’s conference is actually the trickiest to deal with of the trio.

See, here’s the problem with Sony’s conference. It dragged. A lot. A lot of time was spent on showing us useless montages of the Playstation line of products, and too much time was spent on demoing 3D. In addition, whereas the games showed on stage were undeniably cool, none of them were new reveals. All of them- Uncharted 3, Resistance 3, inFamous 2, all of them– were games we’d already known about. No new reveals at all. It took away a lot of wind from the conference’s sails. The fact that a lot of time was spent on demoing 3D and Move kind of made it sad.

Until the end.

The price reveal of the PS Vita was the highlight of Sony's conference.

You see, Sony saved the best for the last. The Playstation Vita’s blow out was awesome, if for nothing else than its surprise reveal, along with a sneak peak at games like LittleBigPlanet and ModNation Racers. Ultimately, it was the Playstation Vita that saved Sony’s conference from being absolute crap.

FINAL GRADE: B

Uncharted 3 and Resistance 3 looked good, but seriously, I wish there had been more surprises. Too much focus was on the Move and 3D, the PSN apology came off more as boasting than anything else, but the Playstation Vita saved the day. All in all, this certainly was not one of Sony’s better conferences, although it still wasn’t as bad as their (epic and hilarious) 2006 showing.