Gender politics in gamng is nothing new, so it's no surprise that in the wake of the press conferences the usual suspects took to twitter to air their grievances. These are the sorts of people who will never be please no matter how much developers pandered to them.
However it was it's prominence in the E3 coverage of the gaming press that was a little on the nose. Advocating "diversity" has become a default editorial position, a mandate. It's very much a symptom of our post feminist PC society that the inherent masculinity of gaming is somehow seen as problematic. The demographic majority in gaming (white male) are to be derided and minorities prioritized. Should a developer include minorities the focus shifts to finding critiquing the portrayal of said minority (to stereotypical, sexist etc). Never mind that half the male characters in gaming these days are fairly archetypal (and voiced by Nolan North, lol).
I'm not sure why one should expect equal representation for a small proportion of the audience (and in the case of racial minorities, a relatively small proportion of the population) to be honest. Perhaps with the high proportion of women in games media, relative to the actual number of women who are core gamers has something to do with these expectations.
There were a few instances that this obsession was evident. The reaction to Assassins Creed and Far Cry 4 Co-op were such examples. Apparently now, there is a mandate that gender be selectable in any multiplayer mode of a game. This was not an option in AC Unity, where the players are simply Arno in different coloured robes. Of course the question was asked and Ubisoft provided an answer (the amount of work required to do a new rig and animations etc). Of course they were taken to task on this, there were editorials written and even old AC designers dug up to insist that it could easily be done. Ubisoft would be made accountable for their sin. Similarly with Far Cry 4, the co-op player is male and when asked the devs noted they had worked on a female character but the work was not able to be completed (didn't have a read for the character, etc). These answers were deemed unacceptable (even though the press are well aware of how pushed for time developers are to meet release dates).
The argument seems to be that women who game can't enjoy or feel excluded by having to use a male avatar. It seems odd to me since its so inconsequential in these games. In AC its really insignificant what gender is under the assassin robes and FC4 is an FPS, so you can't even see your character most of the time. It also seems odd that you would need to project yourself onto these characters. You aren't building up these characters or customizing them, simply playing out the action with them.
So many games shown at E3 include customizable characters (including gender). Dragon Age, Sunset Over Drive, The Division to name a few. To me, this is more about the politics than a legitimate issue. Not only that but there seems to be this pretense of wanting to "educate" their audience. It's here that people in the games media seem to be ignorant about the disconnect with the audience on this issue. The audience actually interested in that stuff is a small proportion of gamers and they alredy gravitate to sites like polygon that specialize in identity politics. The rest of us just aren't interested in being beaten around the head with this stuff.
Don't get me started on this article by Gamespots Tom McShea on Rainbow 6 Siege: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-disturbing-representation-of-women-in-the-rainbow-six-siege-e3-demo/1100-6420266/
The most heavy handed nonsense you are likely to read for some time.
The enthusiast press has become the SJW press. No wonder gamers are looking elsewhere for their coverage.
