Wait, E3 is Today?

Today, the E3 mothership will descend upon the west coast mecca of clean living we call LA. Potentially, this is the most interesting one in many years, too. Why is that? Hey, there are two new consoles coming out in the next few months (we hope), so we are guaranteed at least a handful of game announcements, and game announcements are fun. Most of them we see coming a mile off; everyone knows that the Xbox One and PS4 will have a Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed game this year. But the potential for there to be surprises during press conferences compared to the last several years of samey stuff is pretty high because of the new machines, so that should make it worth it to at least follow Sony and Microsoft's press events all the way through.

That's not what I'm getting at, though. This year's E3 has an odd feeling of foreboding importance. It has something to prove as an event now that we're seven years removed from the last round of new hardware, and the industry is a completely different place. Mobile and PC gaming has a much stronger foothold now than anyone thought they would back then, and I have a feeling that if the trade show doesn't make a serious splash this year (and, by extension, the new consoles when they come out) then we'll probably see it limp toward an inevitable, unceremonious death sooner rather than later. The last two or three years of the show have been a little on the rough side already, and many games media folks were wondering about its continued relevancy going forward. I'm one of them. I suppose I'd miss it if it didn't exist, but the survival-of-the-fittest nature of technology isn't as sentimental as I am.

After a weekend away, the continued adventures of Tomb Dater will return. Your homework today is to check out USGamer when it finally launches (the new home for games writing hepcats like Jeremy Parish and Frank Cifaldi EDIT: Nope, Cifaldi doesn't work there, sadly), as well as to lose your cool anonymously on message boards when Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony do things that you don't like at the LA Convention Center.