Microsoft: Was earlier today. Was really boring and casual/sequel-centric, as usual. Kinect, casual stuff, Dance Central for Kinect, the mediocre-looking Fable game for Kinect, Gears of War, Forza, Halo 4, Splinter Cell, more social gaming stuff, Microsoft's new WiiU-controller-"inspired" app for PC, phones, tablets, etc. that lets games display some stuff on that screen while you play (such an original idea!), etc...
EA: Was earlier today. Solid, well-produced conference about 10 games they're currently working on. Good conference. The new NFS game is from Criterion, and looks pretty good. Reusing names again, this one's Most Wanted.
Ubisoft: Starts in 20 minutes. Hopefully it'll be fun!
Sony: 9pm EST today. I expect to be bored like usual.
Nintendo: Had a WiiU controller briefing yesterday. They also have their main, WiiU-focused briefing tomorrow (noon EST), and also a third briefing focused on their 3DS lineup at 9pm EST tomorrow. Yeah, lots of stuff!
Summary of conferences so far: Boring.
Ubisoft was great fun as usual! Their hosts were stupidly amusing as usual, and they showed some interesting games too. Watch Dogs doesn't look like something I'd buy, but I'm sure it'll be popular, and it looks interesting (and good). Far Cry 3... um, that was weird, and insane (literally). They also showed Shootmania, finally. It looks okay.
In addition, they had a WiiU section. They showed ZombiU, a zombie game set in London, which apparently is Killer Freaks from Outer Space, with a theme change. Looked, well, like a zombie-fighting game. Nice visuals. They also showed Rayman Legends (or something like that) for WiiU, with a 5-player mode where four people play as the characters, and one, with the WiiU touchscreen pad, as Murphy, flying around the screen and interacting with stuff that way. It looked like Rayman Origins, which is pretty cool of course.
So yeah, overall, Ubisoft was good, as usual.
Actually the application for phones and tablets is a pretty neat sort of implementation. It works both ways. Going with the whole "set top box" that the 360 has successfully become, it allows music and video to be streamed from whatever device you have linked. They went far enough to step outside of Windows phones and support Android and iOS devices.
More to the point, it's free, so that's nice.
Sony's conference felt too long, as usual. It was actually shorter than some of their conferences, but the problem is, that they did that by just not covering a lot of stuff; the usual Sony problem of too-long segments was in full display.
But seriously, given how much the system is struggling, it was really odd that they mentioned the Vita as little as they did. Sony only actually showed like one or two Vita games, at most... quite strange. It was almost all focused on the PS3. As for what they showed for PS3, there was a new game from the Heavy Rain guy, that again looks like a QTE game like that last one is, Playstation All Stars Battle Royale, an average-looking SSB knockoff (let's just say that what we saw doesn't give SSB much competition...), some shooters, a new God of War game, and The Last of Us, as well as a few others. The Last of Us had the best trailer there, which they probably knew, because they finished with that one. I don't know that i'd want to play it myself, but I'm sure the game will be very popular.
Overall though, average conference. It is kind of bizarre that I think Vita actually was mentioned less this time than the PSP and Vita were in last year's... the main appearance of the Vita was in a little bit for an Assassin's Creed game for the Vita, and as a WiiU-controller-style controller some people were playing the Playstation All Stars Battle Royale game with. You can play that game with either regular gamepads or Vitas, apparently.
So yeah, Ubisoft had the best conference of the day for sure.
Nintendo's conference... eh, it was alright, but I agree with a lot of people that it should have been better. It was pretty disappointing that they didn't end it with a major announcement, most obviously... NintendoLand actually does look fun -- some of those minigames look good -- but that's not quite "end of the conference big surprise" material. Still, people saying that the conference was horrible are exaggerating, that's not true; even though it was somewhat mediocre, it was still a bit better than the MS and Sony conferences, and actually had more 3DS stuff in it than Vita stuff in Sony's, despite there also being a separate 3DS conference.
On the note of today's 3DS conference, it was actually reasonably good. It had absolutely no new announcements, nothing at all, but it did have new information about a bunch of 3DS games, including an extended gameplay demo of Paper Mario (looks great! I want to play it), and footage of the Castlevania Lord of Shadow game too (it's a 2.5d game with some Castlevania III characters...), among others. If it'd had any new announcements in it, it'd have been one of the best E3 press conferences. Oh well...
However, just shortly after that conference, Reggie accidentally told told the press that Fire Emblem 3DS IS coming to the US! Yeah, this is the one I'd really been worried about, since we hadn't heard anything of it, so it's just fantastic that it's coming. That it wasn't supposed to be announced now suggests that it's probably a 2013 title, unfortunately (Nintendo didn't say anything about 2013 games in their press conferences), but it's fantastic that it is coming, after they didn't bring over the second DS game. (And yes, I know the first DS game was the worst localized FE game by far. I've heard that the second one was an improvement over it, so it is unfortunate that we missed it.)
No one has any comment at all about Nintendo's E3, seriously?
Honestly I hadn't even looked into it yet.
This one has though:
<img src="http://cdn.brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/comics/2012-06-13-415-ComicReviewE32012.jpg">
Hmm, sounds like some good games, and something actually decent from Ubisoft on a Nintendo system? Wonderment!