E3 2017: Microsoft - Wrap Up

[Nespresso]

 

 

 

 

Conference Expectations

Spoiler

 

This years Xbox conference will be 24 hrs earlier than usual, which points to the team having a lot to say and not wanting to share the spotlight with anyone.

 

Of course the focus this year will be Scorpio. MS’s soon to be released flagship console, which is set to end Sony's claim of putting out the world's most powerful console. With the final form, release date, name, price and technical specs all expected to be announced (or as is the case with the tech specs, just flaunted again), expect much of Microsoft’s presentation to be centered around the Scorpio.

 

When it comes to game announcements, things are a little less clear. We know the hugely anticipated Crackdown 3 will be at the show, along with Rare’s new online adventure title, Sea Of Thieves. Turn 10 will be on hand to put Forza 7 through it’s paces, which will almost certainly be rolled out to showcase what Scorpio can do.

 

There will be no Halo 6 at the show and anyone hoping for a Battletoads revival looks to be out of luck too. However, there is talk that The Collective (formerly Black Tusk) may have returned to their stealth infiltration game, which got tongues wagging before they were pulled off it to tackle Gears of War 4. Some websites are also suggesting that a State Of Decay 2 could be getting a reveal, with MS pushing it as a proper AAA game.

 

Steam’s Greenlight program has proven to be fertile ground for MS in the past, so don’t be too surprised if we see games like Dead Cells or PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds also finding a home on the platform.

 

To wrap up, we could see MS jump aboard the VR train, as Scorpio certainly has the grunt to make it work and a further rollout of their backwards compatibility program to extend to the original Xbox would be a particularly tasty cherry to round the show out with.

With a hardware announcement and a lot of studios with no announced games yet revealed, MS really should be set to have a banner E3.

 

E3 Conference 2016

 

 

 

 

 

Wrap Up & Media:

 

You’d be hard pressed to say Microsoft didn’t bring enough games to the show this year. From the glorious Cuphead and outrageously beautiful Ori & The Will Of The Wisps, to Forza 7 and survival RPG, Ashen, MS bombarded their conference with game after game after game, mixing original IP with anticipated sequel and first party exclusives with third party reveals. Yet there was a sense that many people watching would have been happy with half the games if only two or three of them had really screamed "fun" at them.

 

The star of the show was of course, MS's new flagship console, the X1 X. With all games being presented in 4k, and Forza 7 being demoed to an impressive 4k/60fps spec, MS are clearly pushing this as the console for the high end gamer. At $499, it didn't come in below anyone's price expectations, but the technical feat in getting that much tech into such a small box has to be acknowledged and nobody should have ever been under the illusion that this was going to be a $50 price bump. The console looks neat too, and has more than a little echo of the classic PS2 design.

 

With the hype surrounding X1 X, expectations were that MS had been keeping their first party powder dry, in order to blow people away for what many were anticipating would be a soft re-launch for the brand. However, the big AAA first party games just weren’t there, and with so much time being spent on multi-platform and timed exclusives games, one has to wonder what is happening with MS's first party teams!

 

Rare’s Sea Of Thieves got a good showing, and if you enjoy that sort of online co-operative world, then it came across well. Crackdown 3 was present, but the paucity of time spent on it has raised concerns that the game may no longer have the enthusiastic backing of Microsoft. State Of Decay 2 sounds compelling enough; with a greater focus on team building and surviving the waste lands rather than just mowing down zombies, it stood out for me as one of the best games of the show. The early reveal of Metro Exodus set the eye candy bar pretty high for all that followed and the announcement that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, would be a Xbox console exclusive raised many cheers amongst the audience.

 

Assassins Creed: Origins made a surprise appearance and instantly impressed with it's vivid colour palette and rich, detailed terrain, but it soon became apparent that this was very much the same Assassins game we've been playing for the last decade, only now we have a drone hawk to play with. Life Is Strange 2 also made a surprise reveal, although it's not clear if this is a full blown sequel or the rumoured prequel.

 

After many more game reveals, the announcement of Xbox Original backwards compatibility, and a string of sizzle reels, MS rounded the evening out with a look at Bioware's impressive new action RPG, Anthem.

 

MS brought enough content to show off and there's no denying the technical achievement of the X1 X, but if you're looking to convince people to drop the best part of $500 on your new, super specced console, then it's a curious strategy to make the two most notable games of the conference a pair of 2D platformers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preview by Robo_1 - Graphics by VN1X

[Yoshimax]

It's on Sunday 

[Nespresso]

[gospvg]

Graphics at the top of these threads are messed up on mobile.

[Nespresso]

Hence the links at the bottom of every post.

[fattakin]

Streaming on Beam / Mixxer as well on the console?

[Wallace]

5 minutes ago, fattakin said:

Streaming on Beam / Mixxer as well on the console?

 

On the beam/mixer app, yeah 

[Revival]

https://blog.mixer.com/e3/

 

Quote

Xbox E3 Briefing

Sunday, June 11th at 10:00pm BST For the first time, watch the Xbox E3 Briefing in 4K! If your display supports it, you can watch in glorious 4K on mixer.com/Xbox or with the Mixer viewing app on Xbox One S. To watch in 4K on Xbox One S, select full screen mode.

The broadcast will be offered in six languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, and also includes support for English Closed Captions. To select an alternate language, click the “cog” button within Mixer to view the available list.

And there will be lots of free stuff! Viewers who login and watch the briefing on Mixer will receive the Xbox E3 MixPot, full of free digital games and DLC. More information on the Xbox E3 MixPot can be found below.

 

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Xbox E3 MixPot

Watch the Xbox E3 Briefing on Mixer to get free stuff. We wanted to do something special for fans during this year’s Xbox E3 Briefing, so we’re giving away a whole MixPot of digital goodness to everyone watching and logged in on Mixer. Here’s how it works:

Watch the Xbox E3 Briefing live on Mixer: The briefing will be aired on Sunday, June 11 at 10:00pm BST. You can watch via the Mixer viewing app on Xbox One, via any web browser at mixer.com/Xbox, or by using the Mixer app on iOS or Android.

 

Sign in to your Mixer account: You must be logged into your Mixer account to get your MixPot.

Link your Mixer account to your Microsoft/Xbox Live account: To learn how to link your Mixer account to your Microsoft/Xbox Live account, see Link a Mixer account to your Microsoft account.  Don’t worry if your account isn’t linked during the E3 Briefing.  Just be sure it’s linked by Friday, June 16th, 11:59 PM PT.

That’s it! Keep an eye out during the briefing as we announce all the digital goodness that will be coming to you after the event.

[Qazimod]

I haven't picked up a Bone yet so usually I only skim through the MS show... but seeing a new-gen machine is always exciting so any Scorpio details would be welcome.  And it's the only show that's on at a convenient time for me, so yay.  

[JPL]

I'm really looking forward to it, but they better bring the games or Scorpio is dead in the water.

[Karzee]

You should Tweet that message to Phil in case he's forgotten.

 

[JPL]

4 minutes ago, Karzee said:

You should Tweet that message to Phil in case he's forgotten.

 

Nah, Uncle Phil will have it covered. Although it would be pretty funny if all they focussed on was the hardware and threw in a couple of token games at the end.

[Karzee]

I forwarded your message to him. Phil has just replied: 

 

Quote

"I fucking KNEW I'd forgotten something. Doh! Thanks for the heads up. I think I can find at least a screenshot of a new game to show" 

 

[Bojangle]

Please tell him to release Crackdown on BC too.

[Vemsie]

Cuphead release date please.

[Yoshimax]

I'm hoping for a new Splinter Cell timed or full exclusive as that franchise has always had synergy with Xbox - i will be very surprised if TC are now working on Shanghai Heist. I've heard Ubi have done some work so stuff like the Division is already now 4K with the assets injected in fact I'm expecting a pretty large % of existing 3rd party stuff to be demonstrable at 4K with bells & whistles like BF1 - would be quite the statement if they went as far back as BF4. Obviously almost if not all the first party back catalogue will be done . I also suspect they'll let DF run riot with their performance capture stuff as they know the resonance their pieces can provide. Forza7 is going to be the best circuit racer ever made and graphically peerless in its Scorpio guise and will demonstrate just how powerful the box is when people try to run it with equivalent settings on their PC rigs then blame Windows10 when they can't match it fully.

 

Showreel of Dev after Dev waxing lyrical about the Scorpio development tools and how empowering they are.

 

Sea of Thieves will be running a build far in advance of what we have been playing weekly.

 

I just hope I get to see it the hotel wifi where I am is shit.

[Yoshimax]

Shannon Loftis has pulled out due to health issues but she did tweet this:

 

 

Rare - SoT

Turn10 - Forza

Cloudgine/Sumo - Crackdown

Undead Labs - State of Decay 2

?

[Transient Curse]

5? 

 

Is that the Xbox exclusive count? 

 

Does Shannon Loftis only deal with the really, really triple A games or are we expecting your 3 and Cuphead and Below? I assume not, but nevertheless it's not the most energising tease I've ever seen.

 

On the subject of Below, the game that I thought was one of the most interesting titles pre launch, might end up being played in my house on the third iteration of the hardware (!). 

[simms]

1 hour ago, Yoshimax said:

and will demonstrate just how powerful the box is when people try to run it with equivalent settings on their PC rigs then blame Windows10 when they can't match it fully.

 

.  Let's not get too carried away now.

[Yoshimax]

41 minutes ago, Wahwah* said:

5? 

 

Is that the Xbox exclusive count? 

 

Does Shannon Loftis only deal with the really, really triple A games or are we expecting your 3 and Cuphead and Below? I assume not, but nevertheless it's not the most energising tease I've ever seen.

 

On the subject of Below, the game that I thought was one of the most interesting titles pre launch, might end up being played in my house on the third iteration of the hardware (!). 

 

Below, Cuphead, Ori etc are id@xbox they fall under Chris Charla!!

[Superunknown]

2 hours ago, Yoshimax said:

Rare - SoT

Turn10 - Forza

Cloudgine/Sumo - Crackdown

?

?

 

Presumably one of the remaining games is State of Decay 2

 

It'll be interesting to see how much Sea of Thieves has progressed versus the alpha; the way some of the changes have been framed in the forum updates implied they were the latest iterations.

[Yoshimax]

23 minutes ago, Phil said:

It'll be interesting to see how much Sea of Thieves has progressed versus the alpha; the way some of the changes have been framed in the forum updates implied they were the latest iterations.

 

Internally they're way ahead of us.

 

 

[KriessG]

15 hours ago, Qazimod said:

I haven't picked up a Bone yet so usually I only skim through the MS show... but seeing a new-gen machine is always exciting so any Scorpio details would be welcome.  And it's the only show that's on at a convenient time for me, so yay.  

 

It isn't a new gen machine though as it doesn't have exclusive games, besides VR. With its specs I wish it was a new gen Xbox with full back compatibility. I'll still get one definitely, along with an adaptor for Kinect for voice controls.

[JPL]

5 is extremely disappointing, especially after @Karzee assured me big Phil was on it.

[Mr. Gerbik]

1 minute ago, JPL said:

5 is extremely disappointing, especially after @Karzee assured me big Phil was on it.

Let's all blame @Karzee

[Kevvy Metal]

5 seems about right, with one of the missing ones being State of Decay 2. Gonna take em a good while yet to turn that slow ship around. 

[Ferine]

Safe bet appearances that haven't been mentioned: Assassin's Creed Origins and Shadow of War.

 

I'd be very surprised if Microsoft aren't the ones to reveal Shadow of the Tomb Raider, too. Doubt there'll be an exclusivity deal this time around — seems like no party really benefited from the last one — but it's an obvious pick as a Scorpio showcase and fills a gap in the Xbox genre line up.

[JPL]

Well, I suppose Sony won E3 last year with The Last Guardian, Shenmue 3 and Final Fantasy VII Remake, 2 of which aren't even out yet. 5 is amazing in comparison. Maybe I should be more optimistic.

[Transient Curse]

Well quite, Shenmue was just a glorified kickstarter to boot! 

[Wallace]

I'm expecting a new Banjo Kazooie game to be revealed but surely it isn't getting a 2017 release. 2018 would be 20 years since the first game...

 

How many AAA games need to be revealed for it to be good again?