This E3 is being heralded as the best one for many years. Blockbuster announcements, revivals of old franchises and games long though dead have risen from the graves for studios to parade around as the conquering heroes for fans to throw money at. On first glance, this year’s show is the one to beat but looking at it closer, this year’s E3 has just been a exercise in how effective manufactured hype can be.

It’s not to say that the show is a complete monstrous display of the power of million dollar marketing departments. OK, it is but we saw some fresh new IP hit the stage. Horizon: Zero Dawn is delving into post post apocalypse, complete with Zoids fighting hunter gatherers while Sea of Thieves seems to be a colourful take on pirates which doesn’t involve diving into bales of hay or murdering people. Titles like Death’s Gambit, Enter the Gungeon and Cuphead act as indie relief in the bombardment of triple A games and Nintendo seems to be doing what Nintendo always does, which is make fun stuff even if it isn’t what their consumers may want. While it is not all doom and gloom, it is certainly pretty shocking on how effective E3 was in blowing people away on stuff which we won’t see for many years, or that isn’t all that groundbreaking.

Sony’s conference is the shining example of this year’s shock and awe mentality. It opened with The Last Guardian, which made many start spasming in ecstasy before unloading Shenmue 3 and the FF7 remake which made hardcore Playstation fans lob wallets at their screens at a record rate. While this may seem amazing, what did we actually see? The Last Guardian looked exactly the same as it did 6 years ago, we only got the promise that Shenmue 3 will be made sometime in the future if fans plop down over $2 million and we got a cinematic trailer for the FF7 remake which just tells us that we may see it sometime in the future. Moreover, the ephemeral 2016 release date hangs over The Last Guardian, Shenmue 3 will be out in 2018 at the earliest while FF7 will only appear next winter at the earliest yet the way fans reacted, you’d think Jesus had beamed into their PS4s and started handing out free money.

Even worse with Shenmue 3, Sony have now revealed they are putting funding to make Shenmue 3 so the Kickstarter was simply to gain interest. So, the whole ‘announcement’ was basically a fan funded investor’s pitch which will only get a return 3 years down the line. This is apparently the best E3 in years? A promise of a revival, a remake of a game which will probably be spurned by hardcore fans on release for being too different and something which hasn’t seen a major development in 6 years. All of this to hide the fact that Sony have nothing for the rest of the year and that we have to wait even longer for the good stuff. Let’s turn to other developers, as Sony aren’t the only one using this tactic of shock and awe.

Cloud’s going to be walking towards the light for at least another 18 months.

Microsoft did have the welcome announcement of bringing backwards compatibility to the Xbox One but again, this is something which should have been with the original package in the first place so don’t pat yourself too hard on the back Microsoft. Excluding indies, Recore and Sea of Thieves were the only original IP, while the rest of the big announcements were either sequels or console exclusive benefits like mod support for Fallout 4 (which Todd Howard has stated he wants to put on PS4 as well so it isn’t that miraculous). The Hololens demo apparently severely overestimated the power of the tech, with the holograms only visible in a very small field of view according to hands on demos, which don’t even come close to the ones seen on stage.

Many other shows then consisted of moneyhatting console exclusives, promising new games by showing slideshows of concept art cobbled together at the last minute to generate more hype or using CG trailers to manufacture hype for something we still know nothing about. When a new game was shown off, actual gameplay demos were hard to come by, instead relying on aformentioned CG trailers and usually shadowed by the looming spectre of pre-order bonuses. All in the service of getting the gears of the hype train turning and gaining as many willing customers on board as early as possible. Either that, or we saw more of stuff we already know about and we just reminded that we need to buy yet another bit of DLC or be reminded of those pieces of extra content we will get if we preorder at select retailers. Moreover, some conferences were just either boring or cringeworthy to watch. Shoutouts to the forgetful translator during the Square conference, the stiff suits on stage and the dullness that was the PC Gaming Show.

This is what made Nintendo’s low key conference so jarring. Besides making weird decisions with putting long standing licenses on budget games, their conference lacked any massive new announcements and showed very few surprises, besides the Mario and Luigi x Paper Mario game. This then caused people to go into a frenzy, denouncing Nintendo’s ability to make games all together, probably due to the fact that the other conferences had blown everyone away with pretty shallow reveals. It doesn’t help that many games that would have got people excited like Fatal Frame, Bravely Second and Fast Racing NEO were either shown in brief sizzle reels or not at all, being left to their Treehouse event but by then, it is too little too late. The hype levels had been raised too high by other conferences and the only way to get sales, is to feed the frenzy.

E3 2015 has shown not only how easy it is to manufacture hype, but how lucrative this practice is. Announcements of stuff that will not even grace customers’ machines until late next year at the least have dominated the show, overshadowing many games we will see this year and who aren’t yet another sequel for a long dormant series. I forsee an marketing arms race based off this show, where the hype trains get longer in order to sucker every last bit of cash out of you as you wait years for something to show. While many may be getting what they want, you’ve got a long time to wait and a lot of glorified adverts to sit through to get them. Even then, you’ll probably have had to pre-order the super mega special edition to get the DLC that should be in the full game as well as the crappy plastic surprise inside.

So, what do you think of the show? Was it all talk and no trousers for you as well? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.