In its only two shows of the year, MS didn't make any significant new game announcements?

[Kresnik]

MS' showing at Gamescom made me realise what a bloody fubar this generation has been with announcements.

And you know... I can kind of excuse Nintendo and Microsoft for it.

WiiU started stalling straight out of the gate, so in January 2013 they had to do something. Emergency Nintendo Direct, announce a load of stuff that was miles off releasing. I mean, some of it was timely, but Yoshi & Xenoblade only released in 2015 (more than 2 years later) and Zelda & Shin Megami Tensei still aren't out. It was clearly an emergency move and established a precedent of announcing stuff much, much too early. They seem to have improved since then.

And then Microsoft did the same with XB1. Got stomped by PS4 out of the gate, so had to do something special aka E3 2014. There was some great, timely stuff in there, but there was also Inside (still not out yet); Rise of the Tomb Raider (still not out yet); Scalebound (not even close to releasing by the looks of things); Crackdown (same as Scalebound) and to really take the cake, Phantom Dust (not even a thing anymore).

But what I don't understand is that Sony have probably been the worst for it. Uncharted 4 was announced far too early (holiday 2014 release, oh yeah?) Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 3 reveals were purely hype machines that weren't even really games at the point they were shown. Shenmue hadn't even begun as a Kickstarter. Heck, even stuff like Destiny & No Man's Sky spent far too long in the spotlight relative to how far they were/are away from release.

And that's the biggest problem - keeping momentum going when you're announcing stuff so early. You either have to try and keep the interest by showing new little slithers of gameplay footage of the same things that get announced, or you have to come up with a new, better set of announcements That are probably equally - if not further - away from launching.

The only game that springs to mind as doing things right this gen is Fallout 4. Announced and released within the same year. More of that please, publishers.