E3 2012: the year of the lackluster blockbuster

The Electronics Entertainment Expo is no place for the easily distracted, every inch of convention center carpet devoted to capturing the attentions of calloused video game journalists. In spite of the customary flash however, it's hard to come away from this year's festivals without a creeping sense of disappointment, that for all the showmanship, we didn't actually see all that much at E3 2012 -- an in-between year that seemed lackluster even by those standards.

It's diminishing to break such a show up into clearly delineated binaries like "winners" and "losers" certainly, but if impact can be measured by lasting buzz, Epic's certainly sitting pretty at the close of the event. It's telling, really, that Unreal Engine 4 generated some of the most excitement around the show. In a year when Sony and Microsoft are no doubt focused on churning out next generation consoles, one of the show's highlights came in the form of a gaming engine -- a backend on which the next generation titles will be built.

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E3 2012: the year of the lackluster blockbuster originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jun 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.