#E32016’s Xbox Press Conference

Xbox One has finally showed us their true colors: almost nothing new. NO, really.

First, if I hear the word “diversity” one more time … seriously, stop with the buzzwords. Or at least make new ones.

As I watched the E3 Microsoft press conference, it occurred to me that this was filled with very little new content all around. Bringing back Gears of War? Bringing Gwent — a card game within the game of Witcher 3 — into it’s own card game? Who thought this was a good idea?

Even the brand new XBone is just an excuse to push Windows 10 on people. What’s up with Windows 10 that they feel the need to shove this on the universe? There was far too much time dedicated to this concept. Fine, they have admitted that their console is terrible, and they have to expand it to PC. Ironic, since they spent a lot of time talking about the specs.

They even brought out yet another entry in the Dead Rising franchise. If you don’t know it, it’s an excuse to slaughter zombies en mass in a variety of creative ways. But Dead Rising 4 is set at Christmas, so that’s different right? It’s not like Batman: Arkham Origins or The Division did the same thing.

Oh wait, they did.

Battlefield 1 looks interesting. But it is, again, yet another sequel. We don’t even talk about Forza. Ever.

And again, yet still, they’re trying to push their “Microsoft studios” television stupidity, like with Quantum Break. If you don’t know what Quantum Break is, you don’t want to know. Consider yourself lucky.

Here’s possibly my major problem: Recore, the most original idea they had at the press conference, wasn’t even expanded on.

Looks cute, doesn’t it? Looks like it should be fun, right?

Good, because that’s all that they showed us at E3.

And then there’s Scalebound.

 

I grant that this looks amazing. But I’ve been burned before.

If you want, you can look up a game called Sea of Thieves, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

There is also Halo Wars 2.  While I’m a fan of the Halo Franchise, can we stop with the sequels now? Or at least do something strange and EXPAND on all of these things? Maybe?

At least it may have a story.
But yes, that’s it. That’s most of the good stuff from the hour of the press conference.
Yeah, they spent more time telling us about specs, and very little time showing us what the specs can do. The most we got is what I showed you above.  The graphics are nice and shiny. But aside from shiny graphics — which should be a GIVEN by now — very little felt like this was an improvement on Xbox 360.
Verdict: It was okay. Generally uninspiring,  The CGI trailers were awesome …. but we needed a lot more gameplay, we needed more content. And I suspect that we’re going to save 90% of the actual content in the individual press conferences from individual studios.
I am not inspired, but that may require more elaboration on the games already brought up. A lot more.

 

About Declan Finn

Declan Finn is the author of Honor at Stake, an urban fantasy novel, nominated for Best Horror in the first annual Dragon Awards. He has also written The Pius Trilogy, an attempt to take Dan Brown to the woodshed in his own medium -- soon to be republished by Silver Empire Press. Finn has also written "Codename: Winterborn," an SF espionage thriller, and it's follow-up, "Codename: Winterborn." And "It was Only on Stun!" and "Set To Kill" are murder mysteries at a science fiction convention.
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