The secrets and the leaks of this year's E3

E3’09: MCV looks back at the announcements that simply be couldn’t be kept under wraps
This year’s E3 was a spectacular return to for the show, with all three of the major platform holders making huge announcements that bode well for their respective platforms. But in today’s day and age of 24/7 reporting, keeping those secrets under wraps has becoming increasingly tough.
Here’s a quick look at what we knew that we shouldn’t have known, and what the powers at be did manage to surprise us with.
THE LEAKS
* Sony’s Motion Sensing Prototype – Jack Tretton boldly professed on the E3 stage that Sony’s new motion tech was one secret it had managed to keep. Not so, Mr. Tretton. MCV had word of the announcement hours before it went live.
* PSPgo – Revealed in the most spectacular fashion, the PSPgo was old news by Saturday afternoon with HD video and pics already doing the digital rounds. In fact, word of the new machine’s name had been around for weeks.

* Project Natal – We all knew that Microsoft was working on Xbox 360 motion tech, even if the rumours relating the recently acquired 3DV were slightly off the mark.

* New Mario – Mario was odds on to make an E3 appearance this year, and MCV knew for certain that a new Mario game was going to be announced, with Super Mario Bros Wii already name-dropped.
* Gran Turismo PSP – MCV had word that the long-awaited handheld version of Polyphony Digital’s was to hog much of the PSP limelight well ahead of the presentation itself.
* Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker – We cut it fine, but MCV had not only identified a new MGS PSP title for E3 – we also got the right name for you.

* Crackdown 2 – Again, this one had been in the works for quite some time, but it was a cheeky Tweet from developers Ruffian that sprung this one early.
* Wii Fit Plus – Owing to Nintendo’s habit of hanging on to a title for as long as possible before outdating it with a sequel, a second Wii Fit outing was by no means a given this E3. Shame, then, that it had been widely predicted.
* Halo Reach – Damn the pesky internet. Not only does it never forget, but make one cock-up on your forum page and a million fanboys are all over it in a shot.
* Forza 3 – We’ve been seeing leaks about this title in various forms for a long, long time now, so it really was about time Microsoft came clean about its exciting new racer.
* Crysis 2 – Not so much a leak as a simply matter of deduction. With Crytek making such big noise about how well its CryENGINE3 runs on both Xbox 360 and PS3, anyone not putting those particular pieces together needs to take a long, hard look at themselves.
* The Last Guardian – The only thing we didn’t know was the name. The video, the developer, the hype – all very old news.
THE SECRETS
* Project Natal – We knew something was coming, but the scope of Microsoft’s new technology was incredibly hard to foresee. Talk of Peter Molyneux’s involvement had been going about, but Milo was a big surprise – and a very welcome one.
* New Mario – Mario was coming, we knew that. But in three separate titles? Whilst Super Mario Bros Wii was no shock, Galaxy 2 was a (hoped for) bolt from the blue, as was Mario’s downloadable DSi title.
* Final Fantasy XIV – This is what the internet geeks call a ‘megaton’, right? The collective gasps of both the Intent office and the E3 audience told you all you needed to know about this announcement. Despite everything, this was the single biggest moment this E3 – much like FFXIII’s ‘defection’ to Xbox 360 was last year’s.
* Agent – A new property? From Rockstar? Exclusive to PS3? Incredible stuff. Jack Tretton did a great job of containing what must have been his quite unbearable excitement.
* Gran Turismo 5 – Far from not predicting it, MCV actually got this one wrong, claiming that GT5 was to be a complete no-show this year. Ooops.
* Metal Gear Solid Rising – This was sort of leaked, in so far as Konami’s teaser site had told us some sort of MGS was on the way. We all expected MGS5, or an MGS4 port for Xbox 360. What no-one foresaw was a new, un-named multi-platform sequel.
* Left 4 Dead 2 – Another huge surprise, here. It feels like the first Left 4 Dead still has plenty of legs at retail, so this announcement of a sequel had simply not been anticipated. Keeping this quiet was a tough job.
* Metroid Other M – No-one saw this coming. The fact that big name developer Team Ninja has been bought on board makes this particular franchise revival all the more exciting.
* Resident Evil PSP – Another killer franchise made for another killer announcement from Sony. The lack of leak may be credited to the scarcity of show information, which suggests that this project is in its very early stages.
* Vitality Sensor – Even if this had have been leaked, few people would have taken it seriously. There’s never been a more muted response to a Nintendo hardware announcement – not that it will stop the thing selling by the bucket load.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/34602/E3-t...-and-the-leaks