The Annual E3 Microsoft press conference thread, 2017 edition

[Silent_Buddha]

Just randomly ran across this as I went to YouTube to look up the 4K version of Ori and the Will of the Wisps trailer so I could watch it again. The title made me interested to see what that was about.

They talk about a variety of things.

The value proposition and who it is targeting. Basically if a person looked at an Xbox Elite Controller at 150 USD and thought that is too expensive, then XBO-X wasn't made for that person. They are deliberately targeting a small subset of the console market.

My thoughts, from a business perspective this makes sense. In general, someone that is likely to pay for a Xbox Elite Controller or an XBO-X at 499 when there's an XBO-S available for half of that, those people are probably going to be people with the disposable income available and the desire to buy a lot of games and the DLC that is released for those games.​

Phil went into a bit about how he went about choosing the titles to show at the conference.

When asked about showing a big exclusive to reveal to go along with XBO-X at the conference. First he mentioned he wanted to try to get across that the best version of any 3rd party game will be on the XBO-X and so there was a large focus on getting those for the conference. For first party games he mentions what was shown and then makes a quip that while people will laugh at MS for showing Minecraft, Minecraft is going to continue to outperform any game shown at E3. He's proud that they were able to show so many games without showing Gears or Halo.

About 343 Studios. "We'll probably have more to talk about that...soon."

There's a question that one of the interviewer's asks regarding Phils desire to have all 3rd party games look best on XBO-X and what can be done if Sony were to stipulate that a game can't look better or run better on XBO-X. This goes into a long and interesting talk by Phil about how he isn't aware of any such deals as well as his dislike for any deal that would prevent a 3rd party from releasing something on any platform, WRT multiplatform titles.

Talks about how MS wants to make it as easy as possible for developers that are already making a PC version of a game to bring across the higher resolution/assets/settings/etc. from the PC versions over to the XBO-X.

My thoughts, yes Checkerboard and other advanced rendering techniques are probably the future, but for the short term, supporting native 4k makes it extremely easy for developers.​

Asked about iterating on consoles and whether MS has a timeline for iterative hardware releases. Short answer there isn't any. Expanded answer, when they see something that warrants the creation of another hardware iteration, that is when they'll create another console. XBO-X was about being able to do 4k and making it easy for developers to do 4k (IE - checkerboarding not required) so it was made. Talks about various scenarios that could trigger the creation of another console. But there is no date set for a future console release.

Asked about whether XBO-X is "his" console and "his" vision, he deflects that and talks about the Xbox team and that it's everyone and not him. He takes a snipe at the XBO and mentions that Xbox should be about power and they lost that focus with the XBO.

My thoughts, he obviously was at odds with the previous Xbox management about how Xbox should have proceeded. Likely why he was chosen to head the Xbox division after XBO stumbled hard out of the gate. IE - he was from the opposing side of things that thought Xbox should have focused on power and not so much on being the everything box.​

He thought Spider-Man looked great and Sony had a great show with great games. He thinks the PS4-P is a good machine at the price it is at.

He stresses that he doesn't believe fighting between console makers (and console fans) is good for gaming. He wants all consoles to succeed, he doesn't want any of the competitors consoles to fail.

My thoughts, if you are a gamer at heart, how can you possibly want any gaming platform to fail? On top of that competition pushes you to be better and to always strive to be the best you can be.​

Stresses he wants compatibility between console "generations". Says he's absolutely happy if someone wants to stick with the XBO and not buy an S or an X. My thoughts, considering game sales are far more important than console hardware sales, it doesn't matter whether a consumer has an XBO, XBO-S, or XBO-T. Whatever console they have, the game sales still generate the same revenue regardless of the console.

I probably shouldn't have paraphrased so much, but I found it interesting and just typed as I listened. I spent way too much time on this, but it was sort of zen to just listen and type. I like typing. We need more typing games like Epistory and Typing of the Dead. Yes, I'm just spewing random thoughts now.

Regards,
SB

 

[blakjedi]

the h

Playable on the floor would be nice, but instead of all the specs, in the reveal, showing gears would've done wonders, showing Marcus in 4k, high texture etc, that would bring a buzz that I felt was missing.
Gears is a beautiful game, and probably stunning on the 1X.
They already have gears up and running, with 4k assets and updated settings on the 1X.

Think some people at E3 even got to see it?
So I don't think it's unfair to show a vid of it.
Maybe get to see it at gamescon or something, is that before 1X release?

Edit: Buzz in terms of 1P, even if it is just a patch.

the hard part is that Gears 4 has been out at 4k on PC... the only thing they could have done is had a DLC level at 4k slated to hit XB1X later this year.

 

[Jay]

the h


the hard part is that Gears 4 has been out at 4k on PC... the only thing they could have done is had a DLC level at 4k slated to hit XB1X later this year.

which for me would've still been better than nothing.

but it's what a console hasn't had, even going forward your going to see games that are on pc.
they've made a fair few updates for 1X, and that's what people would be talking about, how great it looks on there.

i think a halo 5 MC DLC would've been better, but gears would've still have been something.

i don't think luckys tale is bad, but having DF doing a break down of that instead is pretty funny.

 

[dobwal]

They did have Xbox one x demos on the floor. In fact there seems to have been a ton of them. Pics show Xbox one X demos with 8-16 dev kits per setup with 2-4 titles per setup.

Forza, COD3 and that Fox game all seem to have xb1x setups. While AC, Madden and DBZ were also included.

https://www.cnet.com/pictures/microsoft-booth-at-e3-2017/7/

 

[Jay]

They did have Xbox one x demos on the floor. In fact there seems to have been a ton of them. Pics show Xbox one X demos with 8-16 dev kits per setup with 2-4 titles per setup.

Forza, COD3 and that Fox game all seem to have xb1x setups. While AC, Madden and DBZ were also included.

https://www.cnet.com/pictures/microsoft-booth-at-e3-2017/7/

yea, I'm not saying they never had any 1X's on the show floor.
i thought they even had gears but that could've been behind closed doors.

the point was since they was unable be get any 1P games out for release of 1X, then a halo 5, or gears dlc could've been something worth doing, and would've padded out the year also.
Obviously not including forza, and crackdown is seen as a cloud poster child.
As for show floor like i said super luckys tale (fox game) and DBZ fighters may be good games, but not what people will think wow about.

DLC may not be the new 1P ip people was looking for, but it would've been something 1P at least.

 

[BRiT]

the point was since they was unable be get any 1P games out for release of 1X, then a halo 5, or gears dlc could've been something worth doing, and would've padded out the year also.
Obviously not including forza, and crackdown is seen as a cloud poster child.

Why are you ignoring Forza and Crackdown for your statements? Just so it would be true? Sure, if you ignore things than any statement can seem to be correct even though its false in reality.

 

[iroboto]

yea, I'm not saying they never had any 1X's on the show floor.
i thought they even had gears but that could've been behind closed doors.

the point was since they was unable be get any 1P games out for release of 1X, then a halo 5, or gears dlc could've been something worth doing, and would've padded out the year also.
Obviously not including forza, and crackdown is seen as a cloud poster child.
As for show floor like i said super luckys tale (fox game) and DBZ fighters may be good games, but not what people will think wow about.

DLC may not be the new 1P ip people was looking for, but it would've been something 1P at least.

graphical showcases will still do well on 1X. It doesn't matter if it's 1P or not. MS still did great overall according to social media. Studios that are building 1X enhanced games, may not be ready to announce i.e. 343. So with Nov 7 being so far out, there's still time for these 3P and 1P studios to make announcements. like the 4K@60 native for Project Cars 2 today.

 

[Jay]

Why are you ignoring Forza and Crackdown for your statements? Just so it would be true? Sure, if you ignore things than any statement can seem to be correct even though its false in reality.

I'm not ignoring so it can be true at all.
forza was expected, and anyone that didn't expect it i don't know what to say.
crackdown was also expected this year, and already known about although i except they showed single player, but even that wasn't what people wanted to see from the game.

as i said, people wanted to see a new 1p ip, new meaning something they didn't already know about.
I'm saying that given the time and cost of producing a new ip that a couple years ago they could've set in motion a DLC to land this year.

it seems you ignored what i said? Although it was a continuation of a conversation so maybe you just missed the context.

 

[Jay]

graphical showcases will still do well on 1X. It doesn't matter if it's 1P or not. MS still did great overall according to social media. Studios that are building 1X enhanced games, may not be ready to announce i.e. 343. So with Nov 7 being so far out, there's still time for these 3P and 1P studios to make announcements. like the 4K@60 native for Project Cars 2 today.

i expect most 3p games to look and perform better.
a lot of people was unhappy about lack of either 1p or new 1p games.
my point was that a dlc could've filled the void and covered many of the basis, whether it be 1p, graphics, tent pole name, whilst also giving a shot in the arm to halo which is still doing well.

I'm expecting many announcements before the launch about 3p games, this was about e3 showing and some of the reasons why people felt ms could've done better (which this is what the thread is about E3 conference)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Why are you ignoring Forza and Crackdown for your statements? Just so it would be true? Sure, if you ignore things than any statement can seem to be correct even though its false in reality.

Additionally, Ori and the Will of the Wisps was the game of the show for some people. And while it caters to a very niche audience, Cuphead made some waves with finally getting a release date. State of Decay 2 made a lot of people happy. The Last Night wowed a lot of people as well.

There wasn't really a huge standout exclusive, but one thing I've been seeing around the internet is comments similar to the following.

MS is releasing a huge variety of different titles representing different genres. And then fair or not, many people came away from Sony's conference talking about how the big exclusives look good, but why is everything from Sony just another 3rd person stealth action story based combat game? Is that all they know how to make anymore? Sure, Knack 2 is coming but it wasn't shown. TLOU2 would have been just another 3rd person stealth action story based combat game. Hell, even God of War is now just another 3rd person action story based combat game (probably not stealth though ).

It's interesting because in the past Sony has been known to bring a variety of different game types to market. But this E3 is the complete opposite of that as their exclusives mostly represented different faces of the same genre. It's interesting. In the past Xbox earned a reputation as the FPS/Shooter console. Sony is rapidly gaining a reputation of only making 3rd person stealth action combat games. They are very good games though, so it's not really something bad (unless, like me, you don't really want to play open world games). It's just something that's interesting to see.

Heck, just look at The Artful Escape, something you'd have expected to be showcased by Sony in the past, but instead was showcased by Microsoft and is generating a lot of positive press.

It's been a rather diverse set of responses and rather interesting to see how many people came away liking Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo or UBIsofts conferences the best. The only conference that almost no one liked was EA's conference.

The key thing that Phil wanted to show at this E3 was that the Xbox platform offers a large variety of games so that no matter what type of game you like, you can find it on the platform. And for the most part it seems to be resonating with a lot of people. And not just a lot of people, but a lot of different types of people.

Showing something from Halo or Gears is what many people expected. But I'm not sure it would have generated nearly as much positive press and word of mouth as they seem to be getting from showing a lot of different types of games. And if it was only announcing DLC? I think that would have backfired. I can already see the cries of M$ and cash grab and other similar types of comments if they had focused on that at the conference.

Regards,
SB

 

[Jay]

Showing something from Halo or Gears is what many people expected. But I'm not sure it would have generated nearly as much positive press and word of mouth as they seem to be getting from showing a lot of different types of games. And if it was only announcing DLC? I think that would have backfired. I can already see the cries of M$ and cash grab and other similar types of comments if they had focused on that at the conference.

I agree with much of what you said.
Milking commentary is always a worry, but I think that the Xbox fans wouldn't be the ones saying that.
If anything people seems to feel like sea of thieves was being milked, as had loads of YouTube vids already and it was a long demo.
But yea, people felt it was lacking AAA 1p game, think a master chief dlc would've been throwing bone to the dog.

Oh and I'm the record saying I personally felt the conference wasn't too bad apart from 1X reveal.
But as you say, that's the general impressions I got from checking out the nets.

Edit: worth noting that from all accounts people liked crackdown and sea of thieves a lot when they played them, just didn't like the way they were presented in conference

 

[iroboto]

i expect most 3p games to look and perform better.
a lot of people was unhappy about lack of either 1p or new 1p games.
my point was that a dlc could've filled the void and covered many of the basis, whether it be 1p, graphics, tent pole name, whilst also giving a shot in the arm to halo which is still doing well.

I'm expecting many announcements before the launch about 3p games, this was about e3 showing and some of the reasons why people felt ms could've done better (which this is what the thread is about E3 conference)

I hear ya, people just want 1p games for "reason". The only thing that 1p games can do is really maximize that hardware that mutliplatforms have a harder time doing. Less of an issue with how close 1X is with the competition in terms of features.

Regardless though, 1p seems like a talking point to me, more cheerleading imo. I really liked what MS showed, mainly indies but everything on stage running on 1X was what sold me on 1X. Ass Origins was the number 1 talked about game in social media, showing up on 1X stage helped both the game and 1X. Anthem? Same thing. Forza, same thing.

People watched the MS conference for a graphics show and got one (at least those with 4K sets) and got sold on the hardware meeting those goals of reach 4K. And those stories continue today.

So I get the need to have impressive 1P. It's sorely missing and now continues to be the main talking point of why not to buy Xbox now that they checked off the hardware box.

But the narrative has moved to comparing 1X to 4Pro. No one even talks about that XBO / PS4 deficit. That's a marketing win for MS to change the topic of discussion. So yea they lost on 1P and that's naturally where the arguments pivot

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Regardless though, 1p seems like a talking point to me, more cheerleading imo.

It's probably relative. If the rival didn't have first party games, it wouldn't matter, but otherwise XB fans are saying, "hey, they get exclusive games we can't play. What about us?! Where's our exclusives they can't play?"

 

[Jay]

I hear ya, people just want 1p games for "reason". The only thing that 1p games can do is really maximize that hardware that mutliplatforms have a harder time doing. Less of an issue with how close 1X is with the competition in terms of features.

Regardless though, 1p seems like a talking point to me, more cheerleading imo. I really liked what MS showed, mainly indies but everything on stage running on 1X was what sold me on 1X. Ass Origins was the number 1 talked about game in social media, showing up on 1X stage helped both the game and 1X. Anthem? Same thing. Forza, same thing.

People watched the MS conference for a graphics show and got one (at least those with 4K sets) and got sold on the hardware meeting those goals of reach 4K. And those stories continue today.

So I get the need to have impressive 1P. It's sorely missing and now continues to be the main talking point of why not to buy Xbox now that they checked off the hardware box.

But the narrative has moved to comparing 1X to 4Pro. No one even talks about that XBO / PS4 deficit. That's a marketing win for MS to change the topic of discussion. So yea they lost on 1P and that's naturally where the arguments pivot

Yea, I said how impressed I was by the production value on a lot of the indie titles they showed. seems to be a real jump compared to previous years, not saying low production type ones are bad, but to me they showed really well.

Metro and anthem looked good, but I personally can't imagine how it would compare to them on 4pro.
Worth mentioning I watched conference on 1080p TV.

You hear it all the time, the change in narrative. from my perspective its about covering all angles though.
If your lacking on the hardware, and got a nice stream of exclusives, you don't throw everything into hardware and 'seemingly' ignore 1p.

I wasn't sold on the 1X, but funnily it wasn't due to the games.
I'll probably still pick it up, but that's because I know enough about the 1X that offsets the reveal for me

 

[BRiT]

XB fans are saying, "hey, they get exclusive games we can't play. What about us?! Where's our exclusives they can't play?"

It's not the Xbox Fans that are saying that now. They may have said it initially, but upon reflection they're not saying it. The Xbox Fans are saying not to ignore Forza, Crackdown, Sea of Thieves, Cup Head, Lucky Tales, and so many others and don't forget all the previous console exclusives that are getting Xbox One X update patches too.

 

[iroboto]

It's probably relative. If the rival didn't have first party games, it wouldn't matter, but otherwise XB fans are saying, "hey, they get exclusive games we can't play. What about us?! Where's our exclusives they can't play?"

Eh probably relative. Sales numbers suggest that 3P has the larger ownership of total sales revenue and at imo if there was cross platform play between the consoles that percentage would be even larger.

I recall a time when Sony launched PS4 with very few exclusives and XBO had them coming out in rather good order st launch. But the argument then was that XBO graphics were inferior, resolution gate. 720p apologists, the list goes on.

The market leader has strong control over the argument imo, just more voices on the internet, and in this case Sony controls the discussion because they are the leader. So now that resolution gate is no longer a talking point, then it's all about exclusives and lack of Japanese support, lack of 3P marketing, DLC, content etc.

We predicted this, well we saw it happening and the trend has only continued further in this regard.

 

[Jay]

Eh probably relative. Sales numbers suggest that 3P has the larger ownership of total sales revenue and at imo if there was cross platform play between the consoles that percentage would be even larger.

I recall a time when Sony launched PS4 with very few exclusives and XBO had them coming out in rather good order st launch. But the argument then was that XBO graphics were inferior, resolution gate. 720p apologists, the list goes on.

The market leader has strong control over the argument imo, just more voices on the internet, and in this case Sony controls the discussion because they are the leader. So now that resolution gate is no longer a talking point, then it's all about exclusives and lack of Japanese support, lack of 3P marketing, DLC, content etc.

We predicted this, well we saw it happening and the trend has only continued further in this regard.

The flip side of that though was PS4 doesn't have any 1P exclusives, and only talk about resolution.
Now they only talk about exclusives not power.

The trouble is things have moved on and changed, so the talking points was bound to also.
If PS was still lacking 1P exclusives and MS wasn't, that argument wouldn't have been able to be changed like that.

So its not just the leader setting the agenda.

This is getting close to the console war discussion so I'll bail out now, although I personally don't think we're having that type of discussion.

 

[iroboto]

The flip side of that though was PS4 doesn't have any 1P exclusives, and only talk about resolution.
Now they only talk about exclusives not power.

The trouble is things have moved on and changed, so the talking points was bound to also.
If PS was still lacking 1P exclusives and MS wasn't, that argument wouldn't have been able to be changed like that.

So its not just the leader setting the agenda.

This is getting close to the console war discussion so I'll bail out now, although I personally don't think we're having that type of discussion.

fair enough, I suppose if Sony didn't have any 1P either, than yea, as per what Shifty said, it's relative. I guess no one would be complaining as a whole

 

[Jay]

Regardless though, 1p seems like a talking point to me, more cheerleading imo. I really liked what MS showed, mainly indies but everything on stage running on 1X was what sold me on 1X. Ass Origins was the number 1 talked about game in social media, showing up on 1X stage helped both the game and 1X. Anthem? Same thing. Forza, same thing.

I'm curious was you already going to buy a 1X and the conference just made you more sure or what?

I'm very a-typical, and far from the norm especially for the 1X, I've not bought a console this generation, and now I've got to the point i really want one regardless of how little I'll get to play/use it, also don't have a 4k display yet.
Yea, i know, crazy, stupid, more money than sense.... I just want a console now, feel like I've got a little console hole in my heart.

saw a new 4k hdr pj for $2k just come out (have 1080p pj), so maybe get that or replace TV, need to decide which would be best, although may stick with what I've got for a while longer and miss out on the 4k goodness.

 

[Jay]

Just randomly ran across this as I went to YouTube to look up the 4K version of Ori and the Will of the Wisps trailer so I could watch it again. The title made me interested to see what that was about.

They talk about a variety of things.

The value proposition and who it is targeting. Basically if a person looked at an Xbox Elite Controller at 150 USD and thought that is too expensive, then XBO-X wasn't made for that person. They are deliberately targeting a small subset of the console market.

My thoughts, from a business perspective this makes sense. In general, someone that is likely to pay for a Xbox Elite Controller or an XBO-X at 499 when there's an XBO-S available for half of that, those people are probably going to be people with the disposable income available and the desire to buy a lot of games and the DLC that is released for those games.​

Phil went into a bit about how he went about choosing the titles to show at the conference.

When asked about showing a big exclusive to reveal to go along with XBO-X at the conference. First he mentioned he wanted to try to get across that the best version of any 3rd party game will be on the XBO-X and so there was a large focus on getting those for the conference. For first party games he mentions what was shown and then makes a quip that while people will laugh at MS for showing Minecraft, Minecraft is going to continue to outperform any game shown at E3. He's proud that they were able to show so many games without showing Gears or Halo.

About 343 Studios. "We'll probably have more to talk about that...soon."

There's a question that one of the interviewer's asks regarding Phils desire to have all 3rd party games look best on XBO-X and what can be done if Sony were to stipulate that a game can't look better or run better on XBO-X. This goes into a long and interesting talk by Phil about how he isn't aware of any such deals as well as his dislike for any deal that would prevent a 3rd party from releasing something on any platform, WRT multiplatform titles.

Talks about how MS wants to make it as easy as possible for developers that are already making a PC version of a game to bring across the higher resolution/assets/settings/etc. from the PC versions over to the XBO-X.

My thoughts, yes Checkerboard and other advanced rendering techniques are probably the future, but for the short term, supporting native 4k makes it extremely easy for developers.​

Asked about iterating on consoles and whether MS has a timeline for iterative hardware releases. Short answer there isn't any. Expanded answer, when they see something that warrants the creation of another hardware iteration, that is when they'll create another console. XBO-X was about being able to do 4k and making it easy for developers to do 4k (IE - checkerboarding not required) so it was made. Talks about various scenarios that could trigger the creation of another console. But there is no date set for a future console release.

Asked about whether XBO-X is "his" console and "his" vision, he deflects that and talks about the Xbox team and that it's everyone and not him. He takes a snipe at the XBO and mentions that Xbox should be about power and they lost that focus with the XBO.

My thoughts, he obviously was at odds with the previous Xbox management about how Xbox should have proceeded. Likely why he was chosen to head the Xbox division after XBO stumbled hard out of the gate. IE - he was from the opposing side of things that thought Xbox should have focused on power and not so much on being the everything box.​

He thought Spider-Man looked great and Sony had a great show with great games. He thinks the PS4-P is a good machine at the price it is at.

He stresses that he doesn't believe fighting between console makers (and console fans) is good for gaming. He wants all consoles to succeed, he doesn't want any of the competitors consoles to fail.

My thoughts, if you are a gamer at heart, how can you possibly want any gaming platform to fail? On top of that competition pushes you to be better and to always strive to be the best you can be.​

Stresses he wants compatibility between console "generations". Says he's absolutely happy if someone wants to stick with the XBO and not buy an S or an X. My thoughts, considering game sales are far more important than console hardware sales, it doesn't matter whether a consumer has an XBO, XBO-S, or XBO-T. Whatever console they have, the game sales still generate the same revenue regardless of the console.

I probably shouldn't have paraphrased so much, but I found it interesting and just typed as I listened. I spent way too much time on this, but it was sort of zen to just listen and type. I like typing. We need more typing games like Epistory and Typing of the Dead. Yes, I'm just spewing random thoughts now.

Regards,
SB

Thanks for that, finally got a chance to watch it.
regarding the controversial part, i can't see any thing wrong in what he said.
he's saying for the performance there's just nothing in it's class and you pay for that, so everything else is fighting in separate class. (obviously talking console)

Claims other platform holders could possibly make from my point of view:
Nintendo can say nothing in the switches class, no other hybrid consoles.

Sony could say they don't see anything in it's class for performance to price value for both it's consoles, with world wide appeal.