ALMOST TOO QUIET

The office, and the gaming world as a whole is very quiet at the moment, and for the same reasons. As I write this, most of the tech and gaming team from Next is in Taiwan in preparation for the hectic three days that are Computex. Malky and I are here holding down the fort, answering phones and sending the latest issue of PCPP. A little under two weeks after Computex wraps up, it’s time for E3. As a result the gaming world, at least from this side of the desk seems to be holding its breath. Nobody is saying or doing anything that could possibly lead to a leak of big new games that are going to be announced at the show. For an industry that thrives on overloading the press with releases and information, the sudden silence is more than a little jarring.

One thing that is certain from the silence is that E3 this year is going to be a big one. This issue comes out the day before the show starts so hopefully my prophecies will ring true, but I have a feeling this is going to be the year for big announcements when it comes to new IPs. Nearly every email I received to set up appointments to see things at E3 contained a list of already announced titles for hands on and at least one behind closed doors look at a new title. Just how many of them are related to superheroes or Star Wars remains to be seen.

Due to the proximity to Computex, tech this month is a little odd as well. Although the cards are just around a year old, AMD has made their RX400 series of cards redundant with a small refresh, upping the clock speeds and lowering the prices. Hopefully this move was made in anticipation of the AMD Vega cards being launched during Computex to challenge Nvidia at the high end of the market. All the cards will be on the table by the time you can read this. With any luck I’ll be proven right so I won’t look like too much of a dumbass. No more than usual anyway.