Every press conference and online event held for E3 2015 serves the same purpose: sell stuff. That’s not a cynical response to the event. It’s just a fact. EA, Ubisoft, Square Enix and Bethesda each held their own press conferences, each showing off a slate of impressive games to hit the market sometime in the next year and a half. Their job is simple.

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, on the other hand, must meet a two-fold requirement in the sell. Yes, there’s the games, but there’s also the message. As platform creators, their calling is high and rightfully scrutinized, as their vision means that much more to the future of gaming. So, what are they telling us this year?

Sony: You Don’t Need that Wish List Anymore

Decision-making at the top of the mountain is easy. Either you stay there or your start going back down. Sony and its massively successful PS4 are approaching sustainability like a drug kingpin – you scraped, you scrambled and now you have a product they’re hooked on – just given them what they want. The result:

A Final Fantasy VII HD Remake Everyone Was Asking For

The Last Guardian finally showed up to the party

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is, definitively, the prettiest game for any console

Sony has found itself in the comfortable position, with the PS4, of living to please.

Final Word: Our games are our product. Have some good ones.

Microsoft: Every Constitution Needs Amendments

If Microsoft isn’t exactly blowing the doors off the wall with its exclusives (which is debatable, depending on what kind of games you like), it’s doing a lot more with its actual hardware than either Sony or Nintendo seem even capable of approaching. Monthly updates and a surprisingly efficient response to Xbox One owner complaints and requests have granted the console its most potent edge on the market. The E3 press conference in its honor made no efforts to dissuade this opinion.

The Xbox One is Backwards Compatible with Select Xbox 360 Games

That headline is timid, but ripe with potential. Currently, only Xbox One owners enrolled in the update preview program have access to the newly ported Xbox 360 games (20+ of them). Everybody gets in on the fun sometime in the winter, according to Microsoft. Surprising, though, is the ease with which these games are accessed, even in the early state of the program – any compatible digital title associated with your Xbox Live account is automatically added to your Xbox One library, and any physical title on the list can be added by simply inserting the Xbox 360 disc.

Final Word: Our console is our best product, so we’ll keep making it better.

Nintendo: Please Enjoy this Music While We Put You on Hold

Reggie Fils-Aimé, Nintendo of America President, opened Nintendo’s E3 presentation with this:

“Recently, Mr. Iwata has made several announcements on how Nintendo itself is being transformed, with expansion to universal theme parks, mobile devices, and our new dedicated game platform, codename: NX, which we’ll tell you more about in 2016.”

So, in 2015, try not to expect too much. The Wii U’s The Legend of Zelda title, which cherry-topped last year’s excellent presentation, was nowhere to be seen. Star Fox Zero for the Wii U saw a fairly underwhelming public debut. The rest of it was a smattering of niche 3DS titles, new amiibo and a choice few interesting Wii U games to compliment the space vulpine and his wily band of starfighting animals.

Perhaps more indicative of Nintendo’s severe lack of enthusiasm for the year 2015 were the questioningly prolonged “developer interviews” which say Shigeru Miyamoto waxing poetic about Japanese arches, among other things.

Final Word: Close your eyes, take a breath, Metroid isn’t happening in the way you want it to, we’re going to try to blow your socks off… in 2016. See you then.

The Future After E3: What Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo Told Gamers at E3 2015