2016 Microsoft E3 Conference

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Although 95 percent of the conference was confirming stuff we already knew of it was a good conference.

The leaks really hurt the "surprises" but I will say the Xbox One S is one looker of a console, the custom controllers look awesome, we happy few looked great, dead rising 4 looks as fun as ever, sea of thieves look great as well, and forza horizon 3 looks to be one one of the best arcade racing experiences... but outside of this... everything else is meh... even scalebound failed to impress.

Microsoft needs some new mojo at their studios... a new title that can sit next to Halo and Gears of War or start digging back in the franchise vault.

Mech Assault
Crimson Skies
Fable (seriously... recreate the team and fix Fable)
Perfect Dark
Conker
Age of Empires

anything but this Halo / Gears fest that's going on.
 
N7Commander95 said:
How the fuck was Scorpio and Play Anywhere not a megaton?
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Play anywhere is cool but Megaton?

And Scorpio was fucking nothing... They had random people talking about design philosophies. It was a premature announcement designed to hide the fact that the rest of their conference was lackluster.
 
People have to understand that if you have a W10 gaming PC they are not trying to sell you an Xbox console anymore. They just want you to have an Xbox account and play games like gears and Forza using W10.
 
The most interesting games seemed to be We Happy Few (I thought of Bioshock right away) and Sea of Thieves.

The twist is hardware outshone software this time by a good margin. XBOX ONE S was a nice refresher package, the designer pads seemed to be pretty slick and Project Scorpio sounded out Microsoft's intentions.

From a software point of view Microsoft did OK. From a hardware point of view they were strong.
 
Conference was overall solid.

  • Shoutout to Orlando massacre felt was unnecessary. Partly after that awful Verge article yesterday, partly that this is a busines/entertainment conference aimed at attracting consumers to their 'side'. However, it was still a nice gesture.
  • Gears 4 actually bored me for the most part. Perhaps it was the terrible camera work for the conference, but nothing felt dire, urgent, or grim. The specific environmental weapons idea looked good despite that, and the saw weapon will be at least a campaign favorite. Knife execution sounds were terrible.
  • Dead Rising 4 looks on point.
  • S model looks like a good upgrade.
  • Scorpio isn't what I want the industry to be (iterative model every 2-3 years, with a s model likely between). Feel like it will further hold back innovation on the software side as devs now have to chase the dragon essentially. However, reserving judgement. On the business side, it's a shame Neo will be absent tonight, even if the specs are likely going back to the drawing board (another symptom that will be tiring with this business model).
  • Sea of Thieves looks fun.
  • Halo Wars 2 beta better leave a better impression. While the CGI trailer was nice (as most Halo ones tend to be), the gameplay trailer was very underwhelming.
  • Sadly, Tekkan, Scalebound, and FFXV just didn't make the best impression of getting myself back into those genres.
  • Interesting things being done on the indie side. We Happy Few gave all the right vibes.
  • Xbox Live service improvements and additions were great.
  • Customizable controllers hopefully won't have a huge markup and are sensible if the customizations cost individually.
  • No Crackdown outside of the sizzle reel was a bummer. Also, wasn't there a robot companion game shown last year? That looked promising, but if that was Microsoft, the absence is a bummer for this year. [Edit: Recore was there apparently, so it must have shown when I stepped out for a business call]
  • Not sure why digital is the only way to access Play Anywhere fully. Just tie the Windows 10 copy to the Microsoft account since it will do that anyway with a one-time key or some other program. With models still starting at 500 GB and the lack of flexibility in pricing, physical isn't quite set to be ditched yet.
 
Evazan said:
I'm just speechless you guys are excited about the Scorpio announcement. It was litterly nothing. Just vapor. Just empty speech. They had shots of a 3D render of a GPU and a cooling fan and said in a year and half were going to deliver a new console that is 6 TFLOPS while having a bunch of people in low lighting talk dramatically about preserving the identity of Xbox and the community.

No price
No games
No hardware!!

You guys are drinking the Kool Aid something fierce if thats all it takes for you to get excited.
Click to expand...

Someone's feeling the pressure, I think.
 
N7Commander95 said:
How the fuck was Scorpio and Play Anywhere not a megaton?
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You think a megaton is being able to cross-buy a game on your PC and Xbox? Do you know how small the percentage of gamers that are actually going to use that is?

You think the announcement of a console that doesn't actually exist is a megaton?

Man its been really rough for Xbox Nation for this to be big news to you all.
 
I have a bunch of thoughts on this conference, but the first one that stands out is: MS needs a new conference director.

Also, now that Scorpio has been confirmed to be an iterative console instead of a 'new generation' as many thought/hoped it would be, I have a bunch of thoughts i'll drop on that as well, specifically cause now we have both platform holders heading in this direction.
 
Almost 90 minutes of exclusives (console exclusives if you want to get technical) and some strong hardware announcements.

Maybe could have done with a huge surprise but it was an excellent conference.

I don't expect Sony to top it.
 
6/10

Pretty bland conference. In a few years it will be wholly forgotten as a by the book effort.
Would like to see even more new I.P. It's hard for me to feel any excitement for Xbox's vision (as a games platform) when they're largely just pedalling out the same tired old franchises.
 
Evazan said:
I'm just speechless you guys are excited about the Scorpio announcement. It was litterly nothing. Just vapor. Just empty speech. They had shots of a 3D render of a GPU and a cooling fan and said in a year and half were going to deliver a new console that is 6 TFLOPS while having a bunch of people in low lighting talk dramatically about preserving the identity of Xbox and the community.

No price
No games
No hardware!!

You guys are drinking the Kool Aid something fierce if thats all it takes for you to get excited.
Click to expand...

Agreed... But it's E3, a time for dreams and disappointment alike!
 
bennibop said:
Was not impressed by the show, they have announced a console to replace a console that is not out. All games are coming to windows 10 so there is absolutely no reason to buy an Xbox at all. Sell your Xbox and buy a PC with a 1070 card instead. Only a few games that were surprises but they were kind of a given they would come to Xbox (dead rising 4)

3/10
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Precisely.


This was an extremely disappointing show. You almost wonder what they were thinking, they made a new console obsolete before even releasing it. This is exactly the kind of crap that made me switch from Microsoft to Sony this generation


Sony's conference (I hope) will focus on games and not teraflops. There's a reason the ps4 has outsold the xbone every single month since launch day (except for a few here and there).
 
The XOS is pretty great. That new smaller size and the fact I can actually stand it up is a massive plus for me.

Though still makes me wonder when I look at my XBO on the desk why was this thing so goddamned huge and had a brick...
 
fallingdove said:
Play anywhere is cool but Megaton?

And Scorpio was fucking nothing... They had random people talking about design philosophies. It was a premature announcement designed to hide the fact that the rest of their conference was lackluster.
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for a pc gamer it's a megaton to me that I can finally get the console exclusives on my pc, instead of buying their crappy consoles.
 
the_prime_mover said:
Good job Microsoft for getting into the PC space, but way to kill your console brand..
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Are they making all their big games playable on PC ?

In that case it seems odd not to have console exclusives. But then a lot of consumers dont want to build a gaming rig and are happy with the convenience of having a "plug and play" console so perhaps not such a big deal.

For me the big deal is shorter lifecycle implied by Scorpio and Neo. I think that may push consumers away due platform choice confusion
 
stat84 said:
I couldnt watch the conference so is there a summary anywhere?
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Here!
xMSb.jpg
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They were kind enough to release this before the conference as well!
 
Mr.Fletcher said:
Almost 90 minutes of exclusives (console exclusives if you want to get technical) and some strong hardware announcements.

Maybe could have done with a huge surprise but it was an excellent conference.

I don't expect Sony to top it.
Click to expand...

Sony could top it with a click of their fingers.

The game announcements were incredibly disappointing.
 
Feeling pretty meh. I am no Gears, dead rising or Halo fan, so those didn't touch my buttons. Was looking forward to Recore and Scalebound, but those seemed less intersting then hoped (scalebounds character is fucking obnoxious) . No real surprises (even without the leaks) and no Ori

Only games I really liked were Forza Horizon 3 and Sea of Thieves, the latter which looked absolutely stunning and fun.

Twisted about the Scorpio thing. It's the way the bizz is going forward, but not sure if I like it. Also unsure if the whole compatibility thing doesn't mean all that power isn't just for 4k and VR, which would make it a 'premium' console and not a new generation one (if we can still talk about gens). The latter would mean this thing isn't for me for the first five years or so, because i can't see myself buying a 4k tv sooner, nor will I get two VR sets (ps vr is on my radar atm)
 
Eh, not too big a deal about the leaks really. I don't think it would've changed people's opinions about what was shown.
 
To me, if you're not a MS adopter right now, and have a PC the message I'm getting is wait until next year when we release the Scorpio, as all your Xbox One games will work on Win 10 and on the new hardware. The release of the Xbox One S was undermined by all of that, and it feels very confusing as to why they would release the major hardware update 1.5 years away in the same breathe as the slim version. I understand that it all works within the same eco-system, but to me, the marketing team really didn't do a good job as to identifying which product people need to buy NOW.

I'd give the conference a 6/10 (was initally going to go 7 because of the games) because it doesn't feel like MS is trying to tell us something one way or another in terms of what direction to choose with hardware if you can play everything on Win 10, but are releasing an updated slim version of the console (sans controller?), oh but wait 1.5 years and get an even better version? Halp.
 
Neonep said:
So if you were disappointed, what did you expect?
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This is really crazy but how about some new games that actually look great.
The only new announcement of a game at this conference was State of Decay 2 and FH3.

Thats it!
Where was the creativity the new IP no one saw coming. I might be old fashioned but I get excited over actual games nowadays.
 
Well, I'm looking forward to Horizon 3, Gears 4, Recore, Halo Wars 2, State of Decay, Dead Rising, and Scalebound.

Horizon 3 looks insane.

Where was Crackdown 3?
 
Scorpio is nothing just a 4k 6 teraflops idea on Phils mind , they did not even show a prototype , no price,no 4k games.

It feels more like a desesperared move....
 
^/!) Seemed like it packed quite a bit in game wise. The Live ecosystem stuff I'm not really into but thought the Minecraft update was a positive, if I were investing in a new unit now I would look to buying or upgrading a PC instead of the Xbox though.
 
Evazan said:
I'm just speechless you guys are excited about the Scorpio announcement. It was litterly nothing. Just vapor. Just empty speech. They had shots of a 3D render of a GPU and a cooling fan and said in a year and half were going to deliver a new console that is 6 TFLOPS while having a bunch of people in low lighting talk dramatically about preserving the identity of Xbox and the community.

No price
No games
No hardware!!

You guys are drinking the Kool Aid something fierce if thats all it takes for you to get excited.
Click to expand...

this need to be repeated over and over again.
 
Neonep said:
So if you were disappointed, what did you expect?
Click to expand...

More exclusives, more surprises, more truly AAA ambitious titles. Nothing shown today can touch the hype behind games like Halo 5 or Uncharted 4. It was a weak showing.

That, and I personally was really hoping for a Halo 5 / Master Chief Collection announcement for Windows 10.

Really disappointed overall with this conference.
 
Damn. I usually like to have one eye on Gaf for commentary during E3 but I'm glad I didn't this time. I've just flicked through a few pages and it's about 80% miserable cynical salty fuckers. I thought it was a great show!
 
Lol. Since I don't have an Xbox but I just built a PC, this was an extremely relevant conference to me for once. I can't tell if I was into because it was relevant to me or because it was fun. But the extreme lack of CG game announcements meant it was concentrated fun!

Good for going all in on PC =D

The disappointing part was where there wasn't really any new announcements. Mostly just catching up on sequels and known quantities.

3.5*'s
 
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