Louis’ E3 2018 Microsoft Press Conference Thoughts
While E3 officially started with EA, I still have the time honored tradition of only watching ‘the big three.’ Despite other events taking place, I still put Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo as must watch conferences. I will talk about my thoughts of Microsoft’s press conference and how they did, in what seems to be a repeat of last year, as they went on to talk about “exclusive” games coming to the platform…for the following year.
I guessed before the show that they would start with the trailer for a new Halo or Gears of War. The trailer for Halo Infinite looks good, as its running on a new engine. After that, there were lots of trailers for indies, exclusive games coming to the platform, and showcasing third party games running better on Xbox One X. The leaked rumor of three Gears of War games were announced with a troll trailer of the Pop Vinyl Gears on mobile, Gears Pop, followed by an RTS game, Gears Tactics, and the full sequel, Gears of War 5.
My thoughts on Microsoft is while they showcased a lot of games, it still had their biggest exploit of exclusive content. Yes, they showed lots of exclusive content, but most were for 2019, which is a trend for most conferences. What hurts Microsoft is that they only have Forza Horizon 4 coming out later in 2018 (Sea of Thieves earlier and recently State of Decay 2), while Sony and Nintendo have more content this year. But judging from the messaging of Phil Spencer, its seems that the conference is only for Xbox fans, as people who haven’t bought an Xbox One now more than likely won’t. But the one thing Microsoft showed that no other company can do is their Game Pass.
Yes, I know about PlayStation Now, but their service is streaming based, which for fighting games or any genre where latency is key can be the deal breaker. Game Pass has you actually downloading the game. I feel the Game Pass is the wild card, as it started with Sea of Thieves; you can play new first party games under a monthly fee and get a discount for buying the game if you have Xbox Live Gold. I completely forgot about this feature until it was brought up for future titles.
