Nintendo won E3 "hands down"

Forget all those publishers, who won the E3 press conference showdown - Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony?

"Nintendo won, hands down," EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich told Eurogamer. "They had great content and a well-executed presentation. No celebrities, no famous rock bands, just straight gaming."

"Nintendo won with a very cool console innovation and great 3DS software," Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan analyst, told us.

"People are still skeptical about core Kinect," Pachter went on, "and with good reason. I had them in third place from a hardcore perspective, first from a business perspective."

Which leaves Sony "in the middle". "PSN apology was great," said Pachter. "Vita price also great." But otherwise "nothing to get excited about".

Piers Harding-Rolls, analyst at Screen Digest told Eurogamer that "they all had their strengths".

Harding-Rolls elaborated: "Nintendo showed its strong ability to innovate and to take home entertainment into new directions; Sony showed its openness to adopting new business models and online games services and delivered on PS Vita pricing; Microsoft delivered a leading mass market content and non-games media message which positions it strongly for this stage of the Xbox 360 cycle."

"I wouldn't say any of the platform holders won."
Doug Creutz, analyst at Cowen and Company
Doug Creutz, analyst at Cowen and Company, gave Eurogamer a different take: "I wouldn't say any of the platform holders won."

"Nintendo got their new console out there and people are interested. But the response was somewhat muted (and their stock price certainly didn't react enthusiastically)," Creutz expanded.

"Sony addressed the network outage elephant in the room forthrightly and didn't botch the pricing on the PSVita, but I'm not sure they realise that the dedicated handheld platform market is essentially dying due to smartphones."

"Microsoft seems content to rest on their laurels for now, which is probably fine, but didn't generate a lot of incremental excitement."

Creutz said the "big winners" were gamers and shops "with the incredible amount of high quality games coming to retail over the next six to 12 months".

"Also of note is the fact that none of the 'new order' of gaming (Zynga Popcap etc.) bothered to show up at all."

You'll probably say, "Oh they don't know what they're talking about." That's why we want to ask you, Eurogamer reader, which of the Big Three you think 'won E3'. Catch-up with our Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo press conference reports if you're not sure.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-e3-hands-down