@erhard: Fuck yes they are...this is ammunition for shitty box art marketing.

No Witcher or Bloodborne. O ok, I see now. It's all just a joke.

Not a Hero was incredible. I had a blast with it over at Devolver's lot outside of E3. Too bad they didn't go there, it seems anyway.

Shouldn't Far Cry be action/adventure and The Order be Action? seems silly.

They actually found 4 handheld games at E3 this year? That's quite a feat. Man, what a bummer this year (and next?) is gonna be for handheld gaming if E3 is any indicator of upcoming games to be excited about... I figured devs would have jumped on the 3DS train by now seeing as how well it did last year, or that Sony would try to push the Vita like Nintendo pushed the Wii U this year because development has, so far, been pretty lackluster for that thing.

Heck, I'm more interested in picking up a Wii U and using it as a sort of bootleg in-house handheld at this point... even though the range on that thing probably isn't that great if you're trying to stream from the console to the controller?

How is Killer Instinct a nominee here? They've literally shown just one character, T. J. Combo. Is that enough to warrant a "best game in X genre"?

Kind of a lackluster E3

To sum it up....meh.

Evolve looks like it'll be super fun...IF you can line up the people to play it. I don't have friends willing to put down sixty at launch.

Though really, I don't see how relevant E3 awards are, except as an excuse for media outlets to write more about E3 and for marketing departments to churn out lame box art. I feel the same way about Game of the Year though, so thats just me. (Probably why GB's crazy videos are the only GOTY content I consume most years)

Has to be playable to be eligible.

Best RPG:

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Fable Legends !Sorry......

As far as I Know Xenoblade Chronicles X is an RPG.....

So how come No Man's Sky is nominated for best of show but isn't nominated for best console game. Are the games in that category supposed to be console exclusive, cause that's kind of dumb.

And if not then why not just copy paste the best of show games to the best console game list? That category seems pretty redundant if it's not made up of console exclusive games (i.e. games that are not available for PC)

This award list really does feel pretty sparse and I guess it only makes sense that things like E3 have shrunk in size. Aside from the fact that a good chunk of games these days are being made by smaller studios and even by individuals and are more likely to show up at PAX instead of E3 (if they show up at a convention at all), E3 used to be so big in part because the way people used to get most of their gaming news was via magazines and showing up at E3 meant your game was guaranteed to at the very least be mentioned instead of just entirely ignored.

Now, people use the Internet for most of their gaming news, so the pressure to present things specifically at E3 regardless of what state they are in is largely gone and developers/publishers can toss out news whenever they want and it'll certainly be picked up by sites and the word will spread that very day; releasing trailers and other news about a game during a less-intense time than E3 is even probably beneficial at this point as it means websites will rush to use that news to fill the void during slow weeks.

Is it just me, or does giving awards to games that aren't even released feel wrong? It directly contributes to the pre-order business culture and rides alongside Early Access as a questionable practice used by all the wrong people. Like, seriously. People need to stop paying for games before release because the vertical slice they made was cool enough to impress.

So the judges actually had hands-on with No Man's Sky and Bloodborne?

Huzzah!

The Keighley lifeform needs lists to sustain itself.

It was there and I heard over on Garnett on Games that it was kinda jacked up, framerate/performance wise.

I want the entire games industry to understand that no one gives a flying fart about how many E3 awards a game gets and the amount of awards given out is obscene. It's monopoly money at the end of the day.

If they wanted to be crazy about it they should give award multipliers out too. 3x for pre release DLC announcements, 10x for stilted online chatter in the trailer, 15x for being rated M, and so on. I want Battlefront to win 100,000 E3 awards next year...

I guess it wasn't optimized for console yet. One of the biggest questions the dev gets is whether the console version will be 1080p60fps.

Looking on other gaming sites, Alex is right that almost every other gaming site gives out E3 awards. If there ever was an obvious ploy to make worthless content just for the clicks, this is it.

SO HAPPY TO GET FORTUNE MAGS TAKE ON THIS

As many have commented, it seems odd games like The Witcher were excluded but games like Bloodborne were included given the mentioned stipulations.

The dearth of racing games, especially on new hardware, is starting to tick me off. I'm going to pick up Driveclub and The Crew, but it's kind of ridiculous that it will have been nearly a year since getting Need for Speed Rivals at launch that another racing game finally becomes available to me on that hardware. I was super bummed out that GRiD Autosport was last gen only. Hell at one point I was actively hoping that at E3 Sony would announce (for PS4) one of those quickie cash-in Gran Turismo sidesteps they used to love. Of course the blame for this lies squarely on the middle period of the last generation when the racing game market was saturated with also-rans like blur, squeezing out sales from other, better racing games and effectively dropping the bottom out the market.

I think all of these categories instead of saying, Best should say, "Notable...."

Notable Online Multiplayer

Notable Indie Game

Notable Driving game

"Best" is an extremely evaluative term, it denotes some amount of knowing, weighing, and evaluation. And, you know what, the word "Notable" might not be something publishers will be so eager to put on the box thus making earning one of these 'suspect' awards more constrained.

And, that won't happen because honestly that is the ONLY reason some of these developers show up. The ESA is desperate to be relevant, and about all they can do is allow for a "BEST ONLINE MULTIPLAYER" badge to show up on a box. That alone for a mediocre game could sell a million more copies, so that is why a EA shows up.

I think when we talk about the relevance of e3 we have to include in that discussion three things core gamers don't like to think about

1) 59% of Americans play video games of some kind, so any ESA show is about Flappy Bird just as much as it is about core game, indie games, and high tech.

2) If, we say e3 is irrelevant than is ESA irrelevant? (If ESA is irrelevant that is something serious! Or, are core gamers - the people who come to Giant Bomb - less relevant in the new games industry?]

3) Giant Bomb does not go to TGS (Japan), Gamecom (Germany), or Blizzcon, Quakecon, or Minecon either. Maybe, they can skip e3, or just send two people. I think for an audience of core gamers, PAX Prime/East are better shows to cover; and e3 is a show to cover from San Francisco, New York and Chicago video video feeds.

If you want to talk about the relevance of e3... you really need to talk about the relevance of core gamers being there or needing 'on-the-scene coverage.