E3 2012: Summary

For those who want the quick and dirty rundown of what each company showed off, here it is:

Konami
-They're getting more into social media by putting Frogger on facebook
-Their soccer franchise, PES, is better this year.
-Zone of the Enders HD collection will have better graphics and a new intro cutscene
-Metal Gear is in its 25th year, so they're re-releasing all their old games in the form of the MGS HD Collection for Xbox, PS3 and Vita, and Snake Eater 3D for the 3DS.
-Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance will be a pure action game and nothing more
-Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 will feature Dracula

Microsoft
-Halo 4 looks like Halo, which is good considering it's a different studio
-Splinter Cell: Blacklist looks more action than stealth, with all new gadgets and Kinect support
-Madden and Fifa will have Kinect support
-Despite their assurances after the poor E3 demonstration last year, Fable: The Journey really does look that bad.
-Gears of War: Judgment is going to be a new Gears game with a smirking criminal protagonist.
-The next Forza game sounds like it's going open-world, and destruction heavy, in the style of Burnout Paradise.
-Kinect now features improved voice recognition along with support for 12 languages.
-Microsoft has gained partnerships with tons of TV, movie, and sports companies, including 24 hour access to ESPN.
-Nike+ is coming to Kinect
-Xbox Smartglass will link all your devices together (smartphones, yes even iphones, tablets, laptops, etc.) so you can, for example, be watching Game of Thrones on your Xbox and have a map of Westeros detailing where the scene is taking place on your tablet.
-The new Tomb Raider gets more impressive the more I see it.  It may be stealing from Uncharted, but to be fair, Uncharted did steal from the original Tomb Raider.
-Ascend: New Gods is from the makers of Toy Soldiers and looks very God of War-like.
-Lococycle has something to do with a futuristic motorcycle.
-Gore Verbinski (director of Pirates of the Caribbean) is making a game called Matter that seems to involve a Portal core taking on Tron viruses.
-Resident Evil 6 has a lot of quick-time events and looks pretty heavy on the action for good or bad.
-Wreckateer is a crappy Kinect shovelware spin on Angry Birds.
-South Park: The Stick of Truth is everything you hope it would be.
-Dance Central 3 is another Kinect dance game, and will feature 2 new songs from Usher, who comes out and performs.
-Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 goes to the near future for better guns and flying turrets.  Still looks like Modern Warfare.

EA
-Dead Space 3 has drop-in/drop-out co-op and is going to kick ass.
-Madden 13 is going to be the best yet.  They swear.  They have a new engine that doesn't look unrealistic at all. /sarcasm  Career mode has incorporated RPG elements like XP.
-SimCity is back with a new engine, along with the facebook game SimCity Social.
-Battlefield 3: Premium is Battlefield's answer to Call of Duty: Elite and looks to do all the same things for $50.
-Star Wars: The Old Republic is getting a giant (free?) update with a new class, new race, new planet, etc.  Also in July you'll be able to play for free up to level 15.
-Medal of Honor: Warfighter looks an awful lot like Battlefield 3, or just a generic shooter using the Frostbite 2 engine.
-EA Sports is expanding with UFC.
-Need for Speed: Most Wanted is a "reboot" of the previous Most Wanted that looks to share more in common with the latest Need for Speeds than it does with the source.
-Crysis 3 is PRETTY, and looks to play in the same way as 2.

Ubisoft
-Just Dance 4 will have Flo Rida, who gives a better performance than Usher.
-Farcry 3 is going to be even more incredible than you thought it was, thanks to the fact that the lead protagonist is insane, and the main villain is likely his split personality.  Yes, there will be hallucinatory sequences.
-Co-op will be back for Splinter Cell: Blacklist
-Avengers: Battle for Earth looks to combine all Marvel properties into some kind of game, possibly exclusively for WiiU and Kinect.  They were unhelpfully unspecific.
-Rayman: Legends will be for WiiU and looks pretty fun
-Other WiiU titles include: ZombiU (which will show up in the Nintendo conference), Your Shape Fitness Evolved, Rabbids Land, Just Dance 4, and Assassin's Creed 3.
-AC3 looks amazing with tree traversal, dual-wielding, dynamic weather and much much more.
-Shootmania is the next iteration of their free-to-play and create games (the first being Trackmania for racing), and while it's only in alpha/beta stage the competitive FPS they created and showed off looked pretty good.
-WATCH DOGS.  I can't shorten what I said.  Go read about it, or watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JcujYbctPk  This is by far the biggest surprise of E3.


Sony
-Beyond: Two Souls is the latest from the makers of Heavy Rain and has to be seen to be believed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NEup8y0g-Q
-Playstation All Stars: Battle Royale is a blatant Super Smash Bros. clone using Playstation characters.  Does that mean it'll be bad?  Eeeeh, jury's still out on this one.
-Vita and PS3 are getting more integrated.  For example, you can use the Vita as a remote to help build levels in Little Big Planet on PS3.
-Tons of indie titles are coming to PSN, and PS Plus is getting a ton of free games to download including Infamous 2 and Little Big Planet 2.
-Vita is getting more PSN titles including PS1 classics like Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy.
-Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified is hopefully going to be the near-console FPS that Resistance: Burning Skies was supposed to be.
-Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation will be for Vita, feature the first female assassin protagonist, take place in New Orleans, and have many of the same features as AC3.
-Speaking of AC3, there will also be naval battles.
-Farcry 3 will have a 4 player co-op campaign on top of the single player, as well as a map editor.
-A new storybook peripheral will use the PS Eye to make interactive books.  The first of which will be the Book of Spells from J.K. Rowling, teaching you how to cast the spells from Harry Potter.
-PS Suite is now more appropriately called PS Mobile, for its attempts to bring PS games to mobile devices.
-God of War: Ascension is no God of War 4.  The opening sequence is almost the exact same as it is in GoW1.  Still, it doesn't look like any less fun, just more of the same.
-The Last of Us is going to be as much about surviving other humans as it is fungus-infested zombies.  Much like I Am Alive there will be a focus on limited resources and using your wits to survive.  Also, despite having a kid escort, the kid is actually super useful.

Nintendo
-Pikmin 3 will feature a new Pikmin type, the ability to control 4 leaders from the touchpad as well as using it as a map to quickly scroll around.
-The WiiU controller will have all of your standard controller buttons, just with a big screen in the middle and a camera at the top.
-The Miiverse will show Miis congregating around the games they're playing.  You can also write messages or draw pictures to communicate with them.
-New Super Mario Bros. U will connect to the Miiverse, allowing people to comment on levels or point out secret areas.
-Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition will feature armored versions of Batman and Catwoman along with a new ability to fill up a bar through fighting and then activate it for increased power.  You can use the controller as an inventory or to do things like pilot the remote batarang or set off individual explosive gels.
-Scribblenauts Unlimited will let you create, name and share your own things, so the franchise can finally fully live up to its promise of being able to put anything in the game just by writing it.
-Other games coming to WiiU: Darksiders 2, Mass Effect 3, Tank! Tank! Tank! from Namco Bandai, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Trine 2 Director's Cut, Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor's Edge, and Aliens: Colonial Marines.
-WiiFitU adds WiiU controller features to WiiFit.
-Sing is a karaoke game where the words to the song appear on the controller.
-New Super Mario Bros. 2 will involve spewing gold coins everywhere, Paper Mario Sticker Star has you pull stickers from the environment to use as your move set, and Luigi's Mansion 2 will have *gasp* more ghosts.  All are coming to 3DS.
-3rd party 3DS titles: Catlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate (yes that's all the same game), Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, Scribblenauts Unlimited, and of course Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
-Lego City Undercover is an open-world Lego game with some almost Prince of Persia platforming elements that actually looks pretty damn fun.
-Just Dance 4 will allow whoever steals the WiiU controller to dictate what moves the other players dancing will do. You monsters.
-ZombiU looks to have the most practical and innovative use of the WiiU controller, and it's a first person zombie action shooter.  And the tricky part?  One bite kills.  Looks to be the only new, interesting WiiU game.
-Nintendoland is a ripoff of Disneyland Kinect Adventures that will feature several minigames related to their various IPs (Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc.).  An inordinate amount of time is spent showing off the Luigi's Ghost Mansion game, which pits 4 players against the "ghost" holding the controller.  They look to this to do for the WiiU what WiiSports did for the Wii.  We shall see.

And that's it!