E3 2018 - Microsoft Press Conference Discussion

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

Let's all get on board the hype train. Hopefully not to early to start this, but a few things have come to the surface about Microsoft's 2018 E3 Press Conference. 

 

Quote

Mike Nichols, Corporate Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Xbox, details plans for Microsoft’s biggest E3 showing ever.

 

Since Xbox made its first appearance at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2000, Xbox has had a major presence at the show, delivering exclusive and powerful ways to let fans in on what we’re up to, and 2018 will be no different.  In fact, it will be our biggest showing ever.

 

With the evolution of E3, now including fans and extended show hours, we saw an opportunity to create an entirely new show experience reaching E3 attendees and those that are following the show from afar.  With that, in collaboration with the Entertainment Software Association, the organizers of E3, we’re excited to announce that Xbox will be taking over the Microsoft Theater, a perfectly situated space located in the heart of L.A. Live and across the street from the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC).

 

The Microsoft Theater will be home to official E3 events like the Xbox E3 2018 Briefing on June 10, 2018 at 1PM PT, various Xbox FanFest activities, hands-on gameplay and demos for all E3 attendees and more.  Not only does the Microsoft Theater allow us to centralize our Xbox presence at E3, but it’s size enables us to include even more fans and partners in the Xbox E3 2018 Briefing than ever before.

 

In addition to the Microsoft Theater, we’ll also continue to have a meaningful presence at the LACC with a new booth completely dedicated to Mixer, where you can play, stream and interact with games and catch the latest E3 news live throughout the entire week.

 

These changes – expanding our presence, multiple venues, taking over the Microsoft Theater – give us the opportunity to bring together a variety of Xbox experiences into one primary location and, most importantly, let fans in on what we’re up to in 2018 and beyond in a fresh new way.

 

So mark your calendars for the Xbox E3 2018 Briefing for June 10, 2018 at 1PM PT to kick off the week of E3 with us.  We’re excited and will have plenty more to share on our E3 2018 plans soon.  Stay tuned to Xbox Wire for an update in April.

[George P Global Moderator]

Everyone hopes this means that they'll have more games to show so they needed the extra space. 

[Skiver Veteran]

I'm a little pessimistic when it comes to E3 these days, maybe it's just me but I feel like everything that's talked about we already know, it just feels like the same stuff each year. Like if they walk on the stage and say guess what, we're releasing a new Forza this year, it will not be a surprise. It also sucks that we know over the next coming months, anything that is a surprise will leak somehow. Some of it may not be 100% true but it's usually based on something and is never far from the truth.

 

 

I hope Microsoft brings some new, exciting titles to the table this year and continue to improve on the game pass. I'd love for them to perhaps consider a new tier subscription that offers what you get with Gold and the Game pass bundled into a "platinum" subscription with a slight discount for having both.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

If Microsoft doesn't show new games which aren't Halo, Gears, Forza or Fable, and they aren't releasing in 2018 or at least early 2019, it's game over for them IMO.

 

And for the love of god stop butchering the definition of "exclusive" and tell Greenawalt we're bored of the car under the stage reveal.

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

@AndrewYou've summed it up pretty well. 

 

They really need some new first party IP that's AAA. I wanna see things like The Last of Us, Uncharted or Horizon Zero Dawn

[Skiver Veteran]

I'd happily take a new fable, although that franchise has been so off and on for years at the same time I just don't want to hear it.

 

The last Halo imo sucked, first Halo in the series I've never finished. Gears was OK, beautiful as usual but the story and gritty nature seems heavily diluted IMO, they do need to let this one rest. Forza, well that was a favourite game series for me up until 7, they started to dilute it's excellence in 6 with the introduction of those bloody mod cards and 7 took it too far.

 

 

[spaceelf]

21 hours ago, Andrew said:

If Microsoft doesn't show new games which aren't Halo, Gears, Forza or Fable, and they aren't releasing in 2018 or at least early 2019, it's game over for them IMO.

 

And for the love of god stop butchering the definition of "exclusive" and tell Greenawalt we're bored of the car under the stage reveal.

I mean Crackdown 3 and State of Decay 2 and Sea of Thieves?  I normally wouldn't ask this, but have you even been paying attention?

 

A lot of publishers have been doing the 'E3 reveal fairly close to release' thing so I don't doubt they have new stuff to announce as well.

[spaceelf]

not to mention whatever that Playground Games open world game not under the Forza umbrella is hasn't been revealed yet.

[Skiver Veteran]

7 minutes ago, dwLostCat said:

I mean Crackdown 3 and State of Decay 2 and Sea of Thieves?  I normally wouldn't ask this, but have you even been paying attention?

 

A lot of publishers have been doing the 'E3 reveal fairly close to release' thing so I don't doubt they have new stuff to announce as well.

2 of that list are released before E3 so, "showing them off" at E3 would be a little redundant.

 

Crackdown 3 at this point has been shown for so many years, also. We want something new, something we haven't seen before.

[spaceelf]

Just now, Skiver said:

2 of that list are released before E3 so, "showing them off" at E3 would be a little redundant.

 

Crackdown 3 at this point has been shown for so many years, also. We want something new, something we haven't seen before.

I'm just saying, by his own rules (not their big name series and releasing in 2018) they qualify.  The Playground Games title and whatever their new studio is doing haven't been properly introduced either.  And, it's E3, which of course they'd be saving most of their reveals for anyway.

[Skiver Veteran]

1 minute ago, dwLostCat said:

I'm just saying, by his own rules (not their big name series and releasing in 2018) they qualify.  The Playground Games title and whatever their new studio is doing haven't been properly introduced either.  And, it's E3, which of course they'd be saving most of their reveals for anyway.

1

I'm a little confused here, who's rules? Andrews issue here is wanting MS to be showing something NEW at E3 that isn't one or more of their staple first party titles, none of what you've listed qualifies because none of them is new.

 

Playground will be working on Horizon 4, it's almost inevitable which, unfortunately, I'd say counts for what Andrew was saying. 

[spaceelf]

1 minute ago, Skiver said:

I'm a little confused here, who's rules? Andrews issue here is wanting MS to be showing something NEW at E3 that isn't one or more of their staple first party titles, none of what you've listed qualifies because none of them is new.

 

Playground will be working on Horizon 4, it's almost inevitable which, unfortunately, I'd say counts for what Andrew was saying. 

Of course they're not 'new', because development does take time.  None of them have been released so they qualify as new in my book.

 

From what I've heard that is not Playgrounds focus right now.  Too many rumors all saying the same thing for it to be a load of crap.  We'll see of course.

 

As far as E3 it's the same ###### every year.  I can't even pretend to be interested in the event itself, but there's always something interesting going on.

[Skiver Veteran]

1 minute ago, dwLostCat said:

Of course they're not 'new', because development does take time.  None of them have been released so they qualify as new in my book.

 

From what I've heard that is not Playgrounds focus right now.  Too many rumors all saying the same thing for it to be a load of crap.  We'll see of course.

 

As far as E3 it's the same ###### every year.  I can't even pretend to be interested in the event itself, but there's always something interesting going on.

You seem to be completely missing the point here of what we're talking about when we say new at E3.

 

Andrew has said he wants to see something new, AKA something we haven't seen before. You quoted him and listed three titles we've all seen footage of, these are not new, not to mention that two out of the three will have been released by E3. If Playground is working on a title we've not seen before,  then sure that will be new and it's what we're after.

[spaceelf]

Just now, Skiver said:

You seem to be completely missing the point here of what we're talking about when we say new at E3.

 

Andrew has said he wants to see something new, AKA something we haven't seen before. You quoted him and listed three titles we've all seen footage of, these are not new, not to mention that two out of the three will have been released by E3. If Playground is working on a title we've not seen before,  then sure that will be new and it's what we're after.

And you're missing the point I was making that the big names don't make MSes entire stable of games releasing in 2018-early 2019 whether or not they're announced at E3?

 

I also gave several examples of things where their work hasn't been announced yet and pointed out that E3 is exactly the venue they would announce what he wants at anyway.

 

So moving on, I feel like we can stop repeating ourselves now.

[spaceelf]

I'd personally just like to see if they can bring over a lot more Eastern titles since things I didn't expect to see have been coming to Xbox recently.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

2 hours ago, dwLostCat said:

I mean Crackdown 3 and State of Decay 2 and Sea of Thieves?  I normally wouldn't ask this, but have you even been paying attention?

I should clarify I'm talking about new IP; Only Sea of Thieves is new, which is great, Rare should never been relegated to Avatar upkeep but I'm personally not interested in it. Skiver is right too though, those games are announced and have been shown off for years in some cases.

 

Also, isn't PG the dev which is supposedly working on Fable 4?

 

2 hours ago, Skiver said:

I'd happily take a new fable, although that franchise has been so off and on for years at the same time I just don't want to hear it.

 

The last Halo imo sucked, first Halo in the series I've never finished. Gears was OK, beautiful as usual but the story and gritty nature seems heavily diluted IMO, they do need to let this one rest. Forza, well that was a favourite game series for me up until 7, they started to dilute it's excellence in 6 with the introduction of those bloody mod cards and 7 took it too far.

 

Each Halo just drifts further and further away from what made me love the series in the first place. With Forza, well it's just hard to get excited about yet another release year after year. It's worse than Assassin's Creed between 2009-2015. And I'm sick of having to buy the micro-transactions to get the "complete" package every time.

 

Fable I loved, but I feel like Lionhead's vision of open world fell far behind what others were doing. It would be even harder now to wow people in a post-Witcher 3 / BOTW gaming world.

 

Gears for me ended with Cliff/Rod's departure from Epic. 4 did nothing for me and the less said about "Judgment" the better.

[George P Global Moderator]

We all want something new, that's a given, say they do show us new games, I wonder what the complaint will be after that? As far as sequels go, everyone has their own 3 to 4 main franchises that they keep doing because they keep selling. When sales start to tank bad then they'll stop or put it on hold for a while. Look at what ubisoft did with AC.  Though I haven't played it yet, origins sounds and looks like a a step in the right direction after the little break they took. 

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

7 hours ago, George P said:

We all want something new, that's a given, say they do show us new games, I wonder what the complaint will be after that? As far as sequels go, everyone has their own 3 to 4 main franchises that they keep doing because they keep selling. When sales start to tank bad then they'll stop or put it on hold for a while. Look at what ubisoft did with AC.  Though I haven't played it yet, origins sounds and looks like a a step in the right direction after the little break they took. 

I mean, I've been unhappy with MS' first party strategy since 2012 or earlier, so it's not a case of me looking for something to be unhappy about and moving on to the next thing. I'm not the only one either. Others were sick of it circa 2010 when MS thought that Kinect was more important, so they took their foot off the gas from offering something "hardcore" and completely abandoned their efforts in JRPGs. What did we get? Oh, Halo Reach, Fable 3, Gears 4 and Forza 4. Fast forward 6+ years and we're still getting the same old games. Halo 5, Forza 7, Gears 4 and soon Fable 4 . The only difference now is 2 of those series don't even have their original creators behind them anymore and lost what made them good in the first place (reserving judgement on Fable 4). I'm honestly surprised that MS hasn't turned Forza into a GaaS considering how desperate they want to be in that space and they release a new entry every year already. Milked is an understatement.

 

And yes, Nintendo and Sony have their own series - Nintendo's success and history is literally built on them, but we're not getting Mario Kart from Nintendo every year are we? Sony haven't made a Killzone since 2013. MS is stuck in their ways with a strategy from 2007 and scared to try anything new. When they do try, they do it by buying up timed exclusives which like I covered in the X1X topic is not going to help. Those games can't stay exclusive - they need to be multi-platform to be near remotely profitable. MS can't even market them as exclusive to begin with (the E3 butchering term of "exclusive"), so people wait and buy the games elsewhere or for complete editions which include the DLC for less £$€, or MS put games up against heavy hitters which can't compete.

[spaceelf]

I admit MSes first party efforts haven't thrilled me either other than Crackdown finally coming back and State of Decay being FAR better than I expected, but it seems like the new people on Xbox are actually dealing with its problems for a change.  That's something we're all obviously happy about.

 

Before the X1X I would've given up on Xbox completely given much more time.  The OS was a glitchfest IIRC a few years back too.  I no longer have any complaints about the X1 ecosystem, where before it was only OK.

 

I expect the first party situation will improve (though obviously they can't fix it all overnight.)  So maybe it won't be completely golden this year but it should still be a notable change from the Forza/Halo/Gearsathon we're used to.

 

(Given when some of those released we're probably due for some new ones though.  Heh.)

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

25 minutes ago, dwLostCat said:

I admit MSes first party efforts haven't thrilled me either other than Crackdown finally coming back and State of Decay being FAR better than I expected, but it seems like the new people on Xbox are actually dealing with its problems for a change.  That's something we're all obviously happy about.

 

Before the X1X I would've given up on Xbox completely given much more time.  The OS was a glitchfest IIRC a few years back too.  I no longer have any complaints about the X1 ecosystem, where before it was only OK.

 

I expect the first party situation will improve (though obviously they can't fix it all overnight.)  So maybe it won't be completely golden this year but it should still be a notable change from the Forza/Halo/Gearsathon we're used to.

It has to be more than golden. Time is running out for this generation. I am more and more convinced we are going to see next gen in 2019 or early 2020. Recently Sony announced they are dropping support for PS3 / Vita on PS+ at that time and just today CD Projekt Red talked about their long awaited Cyberpunk 2077 being a cross-gen release.

[spaceelf]

28 minutes ago, Andrew said:

It has to be more than golden. Time is running out for this generation. I am more and more convinced we are going to see next gen in 2019 or early 2020. Recently Sony announced they are dropping support for PS3 / Vita on PS+ at that time and just today CD Projekt Red talked about their long awaited Cyberpunk 2077 being a cross-gen release.

When PS5 shows up MS will be in a lot better position to ride the wave than PS4 Pro was (given that it had barely any extra RAM which made some 4K scenes look terrible.)

 

At this point, 'next gen' won't really mean much as far as I'm concerned.  Smoother framerates?  Sure.  Better graphics?  Probably.  Actually different games?  Probably not.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

19 minutes ago, dwLostCat said:

When PS5 shows up MS will be in a lot better position to ride the wave than PS4 Pro was

Will they though? It might be enough for some people to hear "most powerful console ever", but if you have nothing to play, it's meaningless. Which is why it's suffering right now. PS4 is packed with exclusives for the next 18 months at least. Is Microsoft going to show up and show games releasing in 2018 too? Or are they going to release when Sony release 9th gen. And if those games are just Halo 6/7, Forza 8/9 and Gears 5/6, then yeah, see my comments above.

19 minutes ago, dwLostCat said:

Smoother framerates?  Sure.  Better graphics?  Probably.  Actually different games?  Probably not.

That's pretty much the definition of every generation. Instead of just barely hitting 4K with compromises we'll (hopefully), get solid 4K60 all the time. I say hopefully because I expected PS4/X1 would have 1080/60 but I was wrong, so who knows. And again this brings back the diminished returns on graphics / £$€. The jumps get smaller but the costs continue to rise. It will be a long time before we ever have a jump like SD to HD had.

[spaceelf]

3 hours ago, Andrew said:

Instead of just barely hitting 4K with compromises we'll (hopefully), get solid 4K60 all the time.

I doubt it can happen without a huge jump in memory bandwidth, which is pretty cost prohibitive.  Probably still will be in 2019 or 2020 the way things are going.

 

We'll have to see.

[spaceelf]

3 hours ago, Andrew said:

PS4 is packed with exclusives for the next 18 months at least.

Oh?  I've barely even turned on my PS4 Pro since I got the X1X, and I doubt that'll change anytime soon.  Good for people who want them I suppose.

 

Should probably sell it or give it away, but I haven't decided to yet.

[George P Global Moderator]

I think we could see some new system at 2020 at best.  Both MS and Sony spent money on the X and the Pro, no rush to release new hardware so soon, and sales are still fine.  What they both might do is start to slow down, and finally stop, production of the original One and 4 just shifting focus to the X and Pro fully.  Until they start to do that though, I don't think we'll be close to new hardware.