#except they briefly showed it in an Xbox showcase of all things

[sage-nebula]

Every day is suffering when you're a Hollow Knight fan. (Happy for y'all in the Hades fandom, tho.)

[cosmos-demiplane]

Microsoft E3 2018 Press Conference Thoughts

Another year, another E3, time to post on my seldom used blog! No promises for when this is going to be more active... but we will have to see what the future holds!

So I’ll start by saying I’m not an Xbox guy, I play mainly PlayStation and PC with a bit of Switch thrown in there for good measure. I won’t be making a big post like this for the other conferences except Sony’s and maybe Nintendo’s.  I’ll be looking at all the things mentioned out of chronology, but in an order that bundles the similar stuff together.

This time around Microsoft gave us one hell of a show. Forgetting the exclusives for now, as a PlayStation player I was very happy with the showcase. They showed off 15 world premieres of games, some noticeable ones that I’m personally excited for were: The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (Set in the Life is Strange universe), The Division 2 (they probably feel privileged they got to announce this), Devil May Cry 5 (surprising to see this and other eastern developed games here as I would normally expect this to be revealed at Sony’s show), Jump Force (Blew my freaking mind, a weeaboo gamers wet dream), Dying Light 2 (Again, Xbox got to unveil this, I know PS is scaling back this year but hot damn, incredible), Just Cause 4, and they rounded out the show with a major title that I am very much looking forward to (more on that one at the end!). In brief, WHAT A SHOW. I want all these games *sigh*.

Notable mentions - NieR: Automata is coming to Xbox, Fallout 76 was briefly talked about before Bethesda’s show, Kingdom Hearts 3 will be coming to Xbox (!), Tales of Vespira, Shadow of the tomb raider, Tunic (furry Zelda, looks cute and the world has a nice design, but the design of the player character is meh imo), and I guess I have to put Gears 5 in here somewhere or someone will bite my arm off.

THE GAME PASS, the value of this thing keeps getting better, The Division, Elder Scrolls Online, and Fallout 4 are being added as well as some new tach (machine learning algorithms) that allows your games to start twice as fast. I don’t think the internet infrastructure is in place yet for the future of purely streamed games, but tools like this will probably help it become a stable, staple service sooner rather than later.

Next I want to talk about exclusives, but before I do I’ll put this game (DLC) here as I’m very much looking forward to it, Sea of Thieves Cursed Sails and Forsaken Shores. These next two updates to Rare’s open world PvP pirate game, which I love, should hopefully inject it with some more much needed content (and hopefully not a time limited campaign!).

Xbox’s weakest point has always been its exclusives. After the cancellation of Scalebound and the further delay of Crackdown 3, they had to show us something during this conference to give us confidence in the future of the platform. After all, strong exclusives lead to strong sales, growth, competition etc. And of course, great games all around.

And oh boy did they deliver! FIVE studios have been brought into the fold to increase their roster of First Party exclusives (The quality of these studios can be discussed later, for now let’s just focus on the positives). The first, one formed for the occasion: The Initiative, led by the guy who worked on Tomb Raider. The other four were snatched up as part of a major investment: Undead Labs (State of Decay), Playground Games (Forza Horizon), Ninja Theory (Formally a PS third party dev, they made 2007s Heavenly Sword and 2017s Hellblade), and finally Compulsion Games (Currently working on We Happy Few). Ninja Theory is the big one that will help them the most against the competition, and for the others, the extra money they will receive from being first party will no doubt be a boon to the scope and quality of their games (looking at you State of Decay!).

The exclusive games they did show off were a mix of the highly anticipated and totally unexpected. Battle Toads, a game wanted by the passionate community was show to exist, with a release date of 2019. Session, a new and exclusive skateboarding game was shown. Forza Horizon 4 was shown off, open world, changing seasons, it looks very different to what they have done with the franchise previously. Crackdown 3 was shown to alleviate fears of any more delays (although, anything is possible).

Lastly, before I give my general thoughts, I wanted to give the show opener and closer their own section. They opened the show by unveiling Halo Infinite, the trailer gave vibes of it being a more open world full of wildlife (rhinos anyone??) and a story centred on Master Chief. Other than that and the name, no other info was given, but you can bet it will be taking the series in a new direction. The show was closed, remarkably, by CD Projekt Red’s, Cyberpunk 2077! They have been silent about this game for a while (approx. 2077 days in fact!) because they pride themselves on quality and only showing their stuff when it’s ready. There was no release date given as the game is still in the oven, but I highly recommend you watch the trailer as this is surely going to be one of the best games of the decade.

Of course there are a few things I left out of smaller importance (PUBG was there for some reason?), but, onto my thoughts. I’ll keep this bit brief because I think you can already gather what my opinion is going to be - Holy shit this was the best Xbox conference in the history of Xbox conferences, maybe ever. Awesome exclusives, brand new/acquired studios, game pass improvements, many BIG world premieres, amazing games for everyone; this conference honestly felt like a show for every gamer as much as it did a show for just Xbox fans. I am excited and looking forward to the future of Xbox and the new first party games they will create. This conference seriously impressed me, and E3 has only just begun!

I don’t like thinking of E3 as a competition, but I don’t see how the others can trump this. Bethesda will be the best conference for Bethesda fans, Sony has downscaled, and Nintendo showed all its cards when it won E3 last year. This year has started on a high and I can’t see it getting any higher, which is a great feeling! If the other conferences are anything like this one, this is going to be an incredible E3!