Microsoft 2015 E3 Press Conference Recap
Going to Be Hard to Follow Microsoft's Act
Microsoft unveiled an absolute ton today, and it should come as no surprise that this included more than a few exclusives. Let's dive right in.
"Halo 5: Guardians"
Oct. 27
This new "Halo" is built from the ground up for Xbox One. Nathan Filion made a lovely cameo, and the gameplay looks fantastic, just like you'd expect from a flagship title. You can control two squads, and the main campaign caries over to the multiplayer. There are 24 players and four environment sizes and was playable at E3. It is described as "Player vs. Player meets Player vs. Everything," called Warzone.
"Recore"
Spring 2016
Robot dog and a woman in tight pants with a rifle are wandering through the desert. They are ambushed by a series of small spider robots. Plenty of battling, taking the smaller robots down, but oh no, dog has been hit and goes down! All that remains of dog his his blue core. The main character picks up the core and places it into the center of a robot that had been laying off to the side and springs to live, dog lives in a new body! This is a very beautiful game (you'll here me saying this a lot in this post, sorry). This looks awesome. Microsoft exclusive.
Xbox One Backward Compatibility
Holiday 2015
Phil Spencer comes out and brings out a huge mic drop bombshell. Xbox One Backward Compatibility with Xbox 360 titles, all running native. Put in your disc, download the game, and you're ready to go. Screenshots, broadcasting, and game DVR functionality from Xbox One are all included. Even better? All developers have to do is say "yes" to approve it; there is no work needed by the developers to make their games available. All of this is available at no charge!
We won't charge you for the games you already own. Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox
Xbox Elite Wireless Controller
Fall 2015
Hair trigger locks, increased precision and accuracy, swappable components such as the D-Pad and joysticks, button remapping, paddles on the back side, adjustable thumbstick sensitivity, and compatible with Xbox One and Windows 10. A whole lot of information all very fast!
Fallout 4
Nov. 10
Gameplay was shown, and second screen experience announced with your smartphone that can act as your PIP Boy. Plenty of buzzwords about Volumetric Lighting, but doesn't seem as visually impressive as Halo 5: Guardians. Lighting is definitely their strong point here. Main character is shown hopping into a knock off Iron Man suit with a machine gun and absolutely unloading into some folks. Fallout 3 will be included with Fallout 4. Additionally, modding! PC mods will transfer over to Xbox One, absolutely free.
EA Access
I'm going to be completely honest here, a lot of this was pretty dull, but I'm doing to do my best here.
EA Access, for those unknown is the "best of EA at only $5 per month, only on Xbox One". Madden NFL '16 releases on August 26th, but EA Access gets you in on August 20th. Same goes for Need for Speed and others. EA Access also gets you unlimited access so the EA Access Vault, games that are ready to download and play. They are adding Titanfall to the EA Access Vault this week, and later this summer, Dragon Age: Inquisition. EA Access also gets you 10% in the store, in-game content, and expansions. This week, for E3, EA Access Vault is being opened to all Xbox Live Gold members all week long.
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
Spring 2016
Funniest, craziest, most over the top experience you've ever played. Peter Moore, COO, EA
New characters, new worlds, and a very nice stylized trailer. Looks pretty good.
"Forza Motorsport 6"
Sept. 15
Another exclusive! Looks exactly like you would expect from a Forza game, very realistic graphics and shiny cars driving around photo realistic tracks. This team has always done really well with graphics. Even if I don't particularly care about cars, I've gotta give credit where it's due. 1080p, 60 FPS. Pre-order now with bonus, whatever that might be.
"Dark Souls III"
Early 2016
Not a whole lot to say on this one, they showed a very nice trailer and it's hard to describe that here. They didn't say anything about it, jut showed a trailer.
"Tom Clancy's The Division: When Society Falls We Rise"
Xbox One players will be the first ones to try "The Division" via an exclusive Beta this December. Laurent Detoc, President, Ubisoft Americas
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Seige
Oct. 13
When "Seige" comes out, you will also be able to play the full versions of Tom Clancy's "Rainbow Six: Vegas" and Tom Clancy's rainbow "Six: Vegas 2" thanks to backwards compatibility on Xbox One. Will come free with "Rainbow Six: Siege."
Gigantic
Beta Aug. 2015
Once again, they didn't actually say anything about this, just showed a trailer which I'll find and place below later today. It's a Windows 10 / Xbox One exclusive with a very stylized cartoon-ish Skylanders art style. Free to play across both platforms.
ID@Xbox
First up, a trailer showing a ton of indie games that will be coming to Xbox One.
- "Cuphead."
- "Rise & Shine."
- "The Mean Greens."
- "The Flame & The Flood."
- "Phantasmal."
- "The Souls Project."
- "Westerado."
- "Sword Coast: Legends."
- "Outward."
- "Goat Simulator: MMore Goatz Edition."
- "The Behemoth."
- "Below."
- "Ark."
- "Recruits."
- "SuperHOT."
Chris Charla, Director of ID@Xbox came out and then proceeded to give us a ton of buzzwords about the ID@Xbox program. He also introduced a handful of indie developers who would be doing Xbox exclusives.
- "Tacoma."
- "Ashen."
- "Beyond Eyes."
- "Cuphead."
Xbox Game Preview
Chris then announced a new pilot program called Xbox Game Preview. This is basically Steam Early Access. It's a new offering that lets gamers buy and play a selections of games while they are still in active development. Every game will have a free trial, and it launches today with two titles.
Ion
New game from Dean Hall, creator of "DayZ." This is another one of those situations where all they really did was show a trailer which had a main character running through an empty looking space ship while a HAL 9000-style AI talked to them, which I'll source and place below. It's a new game with a sci-fi space theme. It'll be interesting to see how well received this game is or isn't due to his past history with "DayZ."
"Rise of Tomb Raider"
Nov. 10
I told you that there were a lot of exclusives right? This is another one. They jumped straight into gameplay with this one as our heroine climbs up an icy mountain face. A very beautiful game, as you'd expect from E3, and all of these amazing graphics are making "Fallout 4" look less and less impressive as we keep going. Seamless switching between cutscenes, realtime action events, and standard gameplay.
"Rare Replay"
Aug. 4
Trailer starts off with a giant Rare logo to tease you with. They're lighting up banners for tons of their classic franchises such as Prefect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, Battletoads, and Konker's Bad Fur Day. It's a collection, 30 Rare games, for $30 to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Very nice!
Sea of Theives
A new exclusive game from Rare. A shared world adventure game, one of the most ambitious games Rare has ever created. Exclusive. A lovely trailer with some in-game footage, which is stylized, but still looking very nice. Definitely is multiplayer and allows you to sail a giant ship with friends, find treasure chests, fight skeletons, and even battles with other ships.
"Fable Legends"
Holiday 2015
The exclusives keep on coming. This one will be Xbox One / Windows 10 exclusive, free to play with Xbox Gold subscription. "Fable Legends" will feature cross-play across both versions, no separate servers between the console and PC versions. Yours saves and items will also carry over between versions.
Valve VR / Oculus Rift
Announcing a relationship with Valve VR, arguing that Windows 10 will be the best platform for VR gaming. Xbox One controller included with every Oculus Rift. Xbox One games will be playable on Oculus Rift, streamed through your Windows 10 PC.
Microsoft HoloLens
Lydia Winters, brand director for Mojang starts things off, and announces "Minecraft" for HoloLens. They're also going to be doing a live demo, and it looks like this version of HoloLens is much closer to the actual production version since it doesn't seem to have the umbilical cord tether or waist pack that it originally had when it was first announced. To show what is happening, they've actually strapped a HoloLens onto one of the cameras, so folks watching can see what is happening and to show you that it's not some video playing on the screen in front of him. Winters joins in using her Surface. The guy handling the gameplay then takes the game and moves it from the wall onto a table where it looks like an interactive 3D city. Plenty of ooh's and aah's were heard from the crowd as this happened. This is very impressive, maybe not practical, but very cool. The camera even switches to a different angle, this one without a HoloLens strapped to it, to show that he is indeed staring at an empty table. He can also access all console commands when using HoloLens with just his voice and summons a lightning strike where he was looking at on the map.
"Gears of War: Ultimate Edition"
Aug. 25
The original "Gears of War" game, remastered to be 1080p with 60 FPS multiplayer. A week long public beta starts today.
"Gears 4"
Holiday 2016
Exclusive world premiere. Cuts straight into live gameplay of a main character and an AI ally running around a stormy eterior, shooting at a mysterious thing, more running in the dark, the world falling apart and crumbling around them. They make it safely inside and find an ooey gooey thing, and then proceeded to pop and spray glowing orange goo onto the main character. Have I mentioned how dark this whole thing is? It's like the contrast needs to be turned up, very difficult to see. They're back outside and an alien with four legs and far too many tongues charges at them, and after a bunch of fighting, the gameplay ends.
Wrap Up
Phil Spencer comes back out one last time, now wearing a Rare shirt to tease everyone and gives a standard generic wrap up speech with plenty of buzzwords.
If you've been waiting to move from Xbox 360, now is the time. Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox
