The Annual E3 Microsoft press conference thread, 2018 edition

Here's the ID@Xbox Teaser Trailer and the list of games shown.

  • Outer Wilds (Console Launch Exclusive)
  • Afterparty (Coming to Xbox Game Pass)
  • Kingdom Two Crowns
  • The Golf Club 2019
  • Warhammer Vermintide (Coming to Xbox Game Pass)
  • Fringe Wars
  • Below (Console Launch Exclusive)
  • Conquerer's Blade
  • Waking (Console Launch Exclusive)
  • Children of Morta
  • Raji an Ancient Epic
  • Super MeatBoy Forever
  • Planet Alpha
  • Cuphead The Delicious Last Course (Console Launch Exclusive)
  • Tunic (Console Launch Exclusive)
  • Session (Console Launch Exclusive)
  • Generation Zero
  • Sable
  • Bomber Crew (Coming to Xbox Game Pass)
  • Harold HALIBUT, a Handmade Adventure Game
  • The MMORPG Black Desert (Console Launch Exclusive)
  • Islands of Nyne, Battle Royale
  • The Wind Road
  • WarGroove
  • Totem Teller
  • Dead Cells
  • Ashen (Console Launch Exclusive, Coming to Xbox Game Pass)

Awesome, I was hoping for a list like that for the Indie showcase. Now I can try to look up some of the really interesting looking games in there that I hadn't seen before.

Regards,
SB
 
I sure wish YouTube and all other Video platforms had Montage Identification Technology, instead of having to go through the video manually and writing up the list of games as they're shown. :p
 
OOOOOOHHHHHHHH!

I get it now. The Jump Force game is all Shonen Jump characters (Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball). So it's a fighting game using iconic characters from the Shonen Jump weekly magazine. That's kind of cool and I wonder what other IPs will be used from that magazine?

Regards,
SB
 
I must be getting old boys, 90% of e3 stuff is a yawn anymore. Maybe 95%.

Like oh boy, another zombie game.

Even cyberpunk while definitely heavy on the radar, looked kinda too city-fied to me. More like a GTA clone which would be blech. And not stylistically cool enough, not enough Blade Runner.

And no Gears or Halo in 2018. Really no big exclusive fall title except a driver (Forza) which I never really count drivers. Unless I missed something. I mean I though they were gonna announce 2018 Gears anyway, not even that.
 
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Seems pretty good grade, that's 80% plus at B or higher.

I think the conference itself was good, spartan, no fluff, wall to wall games, Spencer is always likeable. It's just the content didn't really interest me.
 
Love the conference. 5 new studios is great and from what I heard this is just the start there will be more studio announcements throughout the next year.

Gears-com looks amazing
Gears 5 is a must buy
Dying light 2 looks great
Cyber punk looks amazing
Fallout of course and it looks better than I thought it would look .
Cup head DLC!
Halo infinite might be the game to get me back into halo.

I also really liked the look of crackdown . My problem now seems that Feb is going to be brutal on my wallet.


The only thing lacking is a new elite controller with Bluetooth in it for the pc. I think this is their best conference in years and I will give it an A rating. EA was a D rating to give an idea.
 
Showing what's coming to Sea of Thieves.

Skeleton NPC ships to fight you on the seas and a new area.

2 new DLC, free?

Regards,
SB
Slowly catching up.

Yes all contest is free this year. I suspect forever but don't quote me on that. It was built as a GaaS. Basically to get people to buy Game Pass. Worked for me.

Tommy McClain
 
It's a pretty nice conference overall mostly due to the third party showings. But apart from some in engine trailers, actual gameplay was very sparse and the only notable ones for me are Forza Horizon 4 and Metro, the rest looked pretty good but not mind blowing. Cyberpunk showing was a disappointment, only in engine trailer not a sliver of gameplay after whole 6 years. Gears 5 had a few moments but was way too short. Halo trailer is gonna Halo I guess. Gotta give MS a big pat for trying tho, however I feel like 2020 and beyond would be their big harvest year for the first party stuff.
 
It was great conference but they didn't really address the problem they've had it for years. The same ol' Halo, Gears, Forza trinity and no new IP exclusive.
The biggest surprise was MS acquiring Ninja Theory. I did not see that one coming.
Also I was shocked to not see Assassin's Creed Odyssey and the much rumored Splinter Cell.
And what's with the Battlefiled V? I thought EA said they had more to show at MS'? Really weird how EA is showing off this game.
 
Pretty good show. Loved the fight Phil showed. He meant business. He was the best thing to ever happen to Xbox. More teams is awesome. Though I was surprised by the Ninja Theory purchase.

Halo looked amazing. Felt & looked like the older games(a good thing). Crackdown was off the wall. Love that man Terry Crews! Boom baby! Ori gave me the feels. Can't wait for those 2 titles next year.

Sea of Thieves I knew would finally get in it's stride. Battling skeleton ships, new map area with volcanoes & a mid-size ship? Yo Ho & a bottle of rum. LOL Don't forget the new weekly challenges start this week.

Gears always looks cool but hard for me to get excited for it. Still haven't played Gears Ultimate or 3 or 4 & I own them all. Cuphead DLC looked great but not sure I will get it since it was a little too hard for me.

Tomb Raider will get bought for sure, though I need to start Rise first. I was waiting for it to drop below $20 for the anniversary version but it's been on Game Pass for the past month or two.

Fallout 4 might get me to jump. Never played any in the series. Todd Howard is a very personable & funny guy. He actually got me interested enough to check their briefing.

The Division 2 was cool but have a feeling more of the same as the first & never finished it. Wished they showed Splinter Cell instead. :(

Slightly disappointed about no big 1st party titles I'm interested coming later this year. Though Horizon 4 might get me to change my mind about racers. Loved the open world of Britain & the seasons.

Next year will be better. But that's probably good considering Sea of Thieves & Red Dead Redemption 2 will have all my time.

Suprised by no talk of price drops, new peripherals or any more backward compatible games. Though they do leave out stuff to be covered later in the week. Maybe tomorrow on Inside Xbox they will have some surprises?

Tommy McClain
 
Is there ant list of titles showing to which platform they are on?
Sony people not liking MS conference no suprise but remember its good with some competition.
 
I don't get the feeling that he listened to the internet and that is what determined his course of actions once he was put in charge of the Xbox division. Not that he didn't listen. Just that he was going to do those things anyway. So the internet gamers were more reinforcement of what he wanted to do, than voices that determined what he was going to do.

I think he was always part of that contingent and likely was at odds with the management team that he replaced (hence why he was put in charge after their initiative failed so miserably).

But the fact that his intentions for the gaming division mirrored that of the gamers on the internet at large certainly helps bolster his position. That likely also makes it easier for him to get funding for the division.

It's amazing to think that he's been with MS since 1988.

It was probably VERY frustrating for him during the dark times when upper management and Xbox management convinced the board to approve getting rid of so many gaming studios (any studio that wasn't developing for console was jettisoned). And it likely killed him when management decided to focus so much on consumer services for XBO rather than focusing only on games.

Again, likely why he was first in line to replacement the outgoing management at the time, rather than also being replaced when XBO failed at launch. Usually when a product fails that badly, the entire management team and anyone associated with it is jettisoned. But not only was he kept on, he was promoted to head of Xbox. Again, to me that indicates that he was part of a rival internal faction that believed gaming should have been the only focus for the platform. And not just that but instead of focusing on games as a service (F2P initiative with previous management), they should be focusing on the traditional game model potentially with experimenting with other formats with additional titles rather than converting core properties into F2P service models.

For example, he was quick to cancel Fable (originally supposed to be F2P) change Sea of Thieves focus (again, originally supposed to be F2P) etc. Remember also that he was one of the key individuals at MS that convinced Bill Gates to acquire and nurture 1st party game studios way back in the 90's.

It's a shame that he wasn't made head of Xbox before XBO released. And I say that despite me personally liking where XBO was going, but most gamer's didn't.

He's basically been pushing for Microsoft to be involved in creating games since the 90's.

Regards,
SB

It wouldn’t have mattered whether Spence was the head of the Xbox before the One. Why do you think J Allard left?

"I wasn’t burned out, just not the right person to get excited about Kinect, Windows gaming and VR,” he said. “I’ve seen too many situations where founders stay on ‘too long’ and didn’t want that to be the case with me. Plus, somewhere along the way, the agenda shifted from changing the world through software to ‘selling more Windows’. It was time for me to go. There were plenty of people that were excited by that challenge. And, hey, they’ve sold more Windows…”

Robbie Bach (Allard’s boss) left at the same time. Seems like MS’s direction on gaming was dictated from up top and probably not by those who readily identified with gamers.
 
Amazingly enough, Phil Spencer was actually aware of the deficiencies in the breadth and depth of their software offerings and has spent his time (once the hardware side was in order) and financial resources on improving the diversity of the library. It's almost like he knows what he's doing.

Clearly talking about next-gen hardware, IMO. Has nothing to do with what Sony may or may not do and everything to do with Xbox making a commitment to continue to release custom console hardware in order to squash the narrative that Xbox Play Anywhere was a prelude to them abandoning it.

I think both of these reinforce the apparently-it-needed-to-be-said idea that Microsoft are investing in Xbox for the future and things will only get better - not that things are bad now. Obviously it could be a few years before some of these investments see the light of day as shipping products., given both Undead Labs and Ninja Theory only just delivered titles. But unless you're Bethesda this seems to be the way it happens now.

I thought it was a pretty good conference all round. :yes:

How can you say that after over a month of 22 degrees and wall-to-wall sunshine??

Fine, add warm rain to my list. Although my taste is driving games is pretty niche - I really want more Motorstorm - Forza Horizon is the most appealing title out there right now. And despite taking the piss a little, I love the tech and I would dearly like to see more open world games with actual seasons. Especially GTA and/or Red Dead. The Witcher 3 would have been even better with this. An open world is so much more believable if it doesn't look the same all the time. :yes:
 
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It wouldn’t have mattered whether Spence was the head of the Xbox before the One. Why do you think J Allard left?



Robbie Bach (Allard’s boss) left at the same time. Seems like MS’s direction on gaming was dictated from up top and probably not by those who readily identified with gamers.

Well, yeah, for Phil Spencer to have been in charge, upper management and the board would have had to approve of the direction he likely would have wanted to take things. IE - for him to have been in charge before XBO launch would imply that upper management and the board weren't all in on Xbox as a living room consumption device.

Instead, upper management and the board went with someone more in tune with the direction they wanted the Xbox division to go.

In me saying I wish Phil Spencer had been in charge at the time, the implication would be that MS would have been behind the direction he'd want to take the division.

I could have gone into more detail on all of that, but the post was already getting a bit long winded as is. :D

Regards,
SB
 
Ninja Theory talks about why they joined Microsoft...


Tommy McClain

What is interesting is that this was exactly the same deal that Lionhead got when the agreed to join MS as a first party. MS was completely hands off and let them do what they wanted. It was only when Lionhead started chronically having issues finishing games that MS was forced to step in.

I think that was the beginning of MS as a coporate entity feeling like they needed to keep close track of what their studios were doing to avoid what happened at Lionhead.

With Phil in charge, hopefully this heralds a return back to when MS was almost completely hands off with their first party studios. Well, I'm sure this was something he's been working towards with their first party studios as soon as he took over, but it's the first we've heard of MS being hands off since he took over.

If so, that's good news. Microsoft Studios created their best games when MS was mostly hands off.

Regards,
SB
 
It's good to see a long term commitment from MS into gaming. They'll ride out this gen and stack the next one. Price reductions of the X1X and having the best HW platform for MP games should let them ride out this gen decently compared to the dire situation they were in.

I expect the next console to have the performance dominance the 360 did. They won't give up the performance crown with a "masses" approach.

Halo on a brand new engine with a focus on Master Chief is great to see.

This felt like a gaming first approach and sets a good tone for the future of the brand.
 
With Phil in charge, hopefully this heralds a return back to when MS was almost completely hands off with their first party studios.

As nice as giving complete creative freedom sounds, you run the risk of multiple studios wanting to do something similar and your first party studios lacking diversity. I think Sony were dumb for allowing two first party studios to work on realistic driving games (Gran Turismo and DriveClub) simultaneously and encouraging two exclusive single-player post-apolocyptic narrative not-quite-zombie survival games (The Last of Us Part II and Days Gone. You may please the fans of those genres but you're also missing an opportunity to do something different for fans who are not into those genres.

Using Sony again as an example of how not to do it, lack of oversight also leads to absurdly (and surely loss-leading) glacial development times like Gran Turismo and The Last Guardian.

Just don't do this, Microsoft. :nope:
 
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