Just posting some quick thoughts on the Microsoft conference.
It showed a lot of stuff that I liked. The two biggest weaknesses was there weren't any new announcements of 1st party exclusives (besides Forza 7 and Ori 2) and the price is really bad. But in terms of games I thought it was really, really good, and damn it's pretty discouraging to see the opposite on Neogaf. Microsoft just doesn't know how to excite gamers in general but for me personally, I guess they just hit all the right spots for me. I can't do anything other than *shrug*. It's discouraging because there aren't many people to share my excitement with. But I guess Microsoft has themselves to blame for this. Again, I can just *shrug* and be happy that I'll enjoy the fuck out of the games coming over the next year. But to see the lukewarm reception on Neogaf has me thinking "Will this last" you know? Like sure, I'll enjoy these games, but nothing from Microsoft seems to click with gamers in general, so will they stay successful long enough for the platform to continue to thrive? Or will the Xbox platform fizzle? I'd hope that for E3 2018 Microsoft completely re-evaluates the way they do E3 conferences - people expect Megaton surprises which Sony does every year, and which Microsoft never does. People's response to Microsoft's E3 will always, always be lukewarm unless Microsoft changes and starts securing those kinds of "huge" surprise announcements.
People have their own expectations but I'm genuinely shocked to see how differently people have reacted to the below games (which I'm personally so so excited about).
Games of the show for me:
Tacoma
Life Is Strange Prequel
The Last Night
The Artful Escape
Four different indie games that look fucking awesome. Two of which are confirmed to release in 2017 (Tacoma coming shortly on August 2nd). We FINALLY have a date for Tacoma, and having a Life Is Strange game centred around Chloe and Rachel was just huge for me.
And other games I really like, which I most certainly will get, were:
AC Origins
Shadow of War
Super Lucky's Escape
Sea of Thieves
State of Decay 2
Cuphead
Ori Will Of The Wisps
Super Lucky's Escape and Sea of Thieves in particular knocked my socks off. Cutesy, colourful platformer looked amazing. And Sea Of Thieves looked incredible - I loved the idea of solving puzzles, plundering treasure, and battling cooperatively with other people.
Other games that looked great but I'd have to see more before I confirm a purchase:
Anthem
Crackdown 3
Metro
Couple that with the OG Xbox BC announcement and the conference overall told me: "Hey Montresor, for the next year or so you're guaranteed an awesome slate of games you're going to love."