I’ll be attending E3 for the first time this year and I can’t think of a better time. With Sony and Microsoft having announced their respective next gen consoles it’s time to put up or shut up. All of the features and techy bells and whistles in the world won’t matter if there are no games people want to play. Just look at Wii U for exhibits A-Z. Sure, Nintendo have some great things for Nintendo fans coming up, but seeing as how Nintendo hasn’t really been for me since the Nintendo 64, the fact remains that the Wii U is not selling well and it can be directly tied to the lack of marquee titles on the console currently.

Anyway, this isn’t meant to be a piece pointing to the drought of Nintendo games or to say why I don’t care about Nintendo. If you’re a Nintendo fan then that’s awesome and I’m sure E3 will have plenty for you to be excited about. My interests fall squarely with Sony and Microsoft and what they plan to show me this year.

E3 has long been the video game Holiday season for me, an event and time of year I look forward to like a kid looks forward to Halloween and Christmas. In the past, I would chomp at the bit for print publications and their coverage of the event. I would literally buy every single magazine that covered E3 at that time of year just in case one outlet would miss or gloss over a detail.

When the Internet finally caught up I would either take off from work on “day zero” or be glued to my phone for updates. I can’t tell you how important my iPhone has been in satiating my gaming news and preview fix.

This year I will be on the floor. In the trenches, going hands on with games I’ve been anxious to get my hands on or see in action for months, – some already announced and a few that aren’t. Instead of reading about the future of video games I will be experiencing it.

Having been able to attend a Bethesda pre-E3 event a few weeks back I got only a very small taste of what to expect in terms of hands-on demos and presentations, but without any of the pomp and circumstance of the mammoth booths, the long lines, the sights and the sounds of thousands of people who all share the same interest if not the same tastes.

We will be attending EA’s press conference, The Download (I’m not making this up) where  I’m confident we will finally get confirmation that Mirror’s Edge 2 exists – something I have been confident of long before the Amazon listings and help pages mistakenly left up for the internet’s all seeing eye.

I’m looking just as forward to playing the games as I am about writing about them. I’ll be seeing AAA games like Saints Row IV, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. I’ll also be seeing smaller indie titles like Zombie Studios’ Daylight and getting some time with the Oculus Rift. After all of the previews, demos and interviews I will be going to work here, opining on what I saw, what I liked, loved, loathed and was indifferent to – all for anyone who cares to read about it.

I’m excited for the megaton announcements like Grand Theft Auto IV coming to the Xbox 360, or the Watch_Dogs reveal, or seeing Call of Duty go from WWII shooter to Modern Warfare and go on to being a phenomenon. Some may look back on that moment as the beginning of the end for the franchise and for changing the industry for the worse, but I saw it as something incredibly special and it happened at E3.

I’m even looking forward to meeting some of the journalist and industry folk whom I respect and admire.

E3 is next week and, personally, I can’t wait.

Related Link(s):

• E3 Official Site