Microsoft's E3 Conference: A Mediocre Showing

"We finally witnessed Microsoft's E3 Conference in 2016 and we offer our thoughts on why the show was a mixed bag, with some strong points but a lot of weak ones."

Gameondaily offer their thoughts on the E3 show

[Overload]

Agreed. It was OK. Sea Of Thieves looks like it could be fun.

[BiggerBoss]

I agree it was pretty meh, aside from the Scorpio announcement.

Did they not show Crackdown? I really wanted to see more of its Cloud capabilities.

[Liqu1d]

Crackdown 3 has been delayed to 2017.

http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

[Sweendog007]

How can you agree with this article if you didn't watch it ? Or you did you watch it but not sure what they showed ?

Your comment did they not show crackdown ? Means you didn't watch it and just reading what articles are saying

[bouzebbal]

The current X1 obviously cannot compute what they have shown in Crackdown so far, and that's the reason they are making an X1 with updated specs. Crackdown will be a launch title mark my words.
I started the conference at Minecraft. No idea what they showed before that but what i saw was so boring, especially Scalebound.

[Magnes]

I think Project Scorpio killed the cloud tech thing.

[PistolsAtDawn]

Apparently it will be at gamescon

[Gazondaily]

Scorpio didn't kill the Cloud tech lol. Even Scorpio can't do that stuff locally. Its too much.

Expect to see Crackdown at Gamescom.

[Hoffmann]

Lol.

[Erik7357]

In terms of content shown yea but that cross play announcement for pc gaming was honestly the most chill thing i've seen a gaming company do.

[jessionpc]

I liked Sea of Thieves a bit, State of Decay 2 really has my attention and Dead Rising 4 might be fun... God, Gears4 looks bad imo...

But I sit here wondering, as awesome as Scorpio sounds... It's super flat for me, I got a much more powerful gaming pc than the scorpio, "I got it like... 3 years ago lol", and it's not bottlenecked by platform or 8gb of ram or a 5200 rpm hdd...

Yea idk... I'll pass probably...

[Elvfam511]

Love seeing sea of thieves and gears 4 was ehh to me. Love how the new xbox looks also but since most of the gamea are coming to windows no need to buy one.

[PistolsAtDawn]

Yeah, but you had your opinion written before the show started.

[Mr-Dude]

It was okay. Lot of 3rd party filler, big mistake imo for announcing the Xbox S and the Scorpio.
Scorpio looks like a beast, but without a 4K tv you ain't gonna see that. And no exclusives, then what? Nothing...

[gangsta_red]

Going to have to agree with this "clickbait" ;) article.

It was a mediocre showing filled with 3rd party filler.

Some of the most cringe worthy gameplay demos I have ever subjected my ears to listen too. That Minecraft demo was terrible, seriously, they should hire actors if they are going to pretend to be excited when playing games.

Gwent? I couldn't believe that was on stage.

We Happy Few is a good game, but that demo was sleep worthy for an on stage presentation. The pacing was just way too slow.

Then Inside, one of the only games I wanted to see in action got a trailer that showed us nothing about the game.

Seriously, I can go on and on about the many mistakes MS made with this E3.

Edit:
I guess one good thing was at least a lot of these games are coming soon.

[Gazondaily]

Haha not you too Gangsta!

Yeah the leaks did some real damage to the show but in general, where were the new IPs?! Pretty poor.

But dat Scorpio...holy.. What is that gonna cost?!

[I_am_Batman]

Hard to say really with knowing only the TFLOPS. It could be anything from 650$ up to 1000$. When they publish more hardware information especially about the CPU it'll be easier to make an educated guess. If I had to take a bet right now I'd put my money on 749$ (which would probably still be a really good deal for the power that's inside).

[Yetter]

@I_am_Batman No chance, its just not gonna happen. The ceiling for a console is 499.00 and MS knows this. New fancy GPUs coming out this year, MS is gonna be ordering GPUs in bulk.

[gangsta_red]

Scorpio was cool but honestly I want to see new games.

And MS is sitting on a glorious mountain of dormant IP's that they should be announcing and presenting.

Great...6TFLOPS, 4k gaming, but all that means jack shit if they don't have the games I'm interested in.

I mean E3 so far is nothing more than telling us a lot of what we already knew from last year. If the rest of the conference is this mediocre than I can honestly say E3 is overrated and should perhaps be a bi-yearly thing. This way it will give companies a little more time to announce new games and show off actual gameplay.

[I_am_Batman]

@Yetter: I'd take almost any bet that it won't be 499$ or less. I don't see how it would be possible to launch a 6TFLOP console in 2017 for 499$ without taking a huge loss on every console sold no matter how much mass ordering MS is doing.

Keep in mind that this is meant to be a premium high end product. I wouldn't be surprised if MS would launch a medium tier Xbox that is spec'd between the Xbox One S and the Scorpio.

Edit: Actually I just realised that I was basing my argumentation on Nvidia GPUs. Since MS is probably going to use AMD take what I've said with a grain of salt. I still doubt it'll be 499$ or less though. We'll have to wait and see until MS unveils the full hardware specs and/ or price to know for sure.

[Errorist76]

AMD's 6TF card is 199,-, so assuming even 399,- isn't unrealistic at all. Still a stupid move because developers are gonna support Sony instead because they can rely on them, even if the NEO is gonna be weaker.

[Zeref]

I'd say gamescom for new IP's

[pompombrum]

As a PS4/PC gamer these days I disagree.. the Xbox conference was a better PC gaming conference than the PC gaming conference lol.

[starchild]

Haha that's true.

[_-EDMIX-_]

Lol agreed

[garrettbobbyferguson]

The PC conference had so many games, you must be high to think that. Either that or you're one of those people that can't accept a game unless it's being developed by a "AAA" studio with a billion dollar budget.

[Goldby]

i really enjoyed the dodge roll simulator they showed off for Final Fantasy XV

[nix]

i really don't know why they chose that particular section to show. i mean, it went on and on. it was irritating to see that guy get thrashed after some point of time. then equally irritating boss MP gets shown from Scalebound. pretty similar, i felt. whole time i kept thinking "shit if it was DS series those players wouldn't be spamming that monster so easily.

[jb227]

Yeah it was weird, because it was typically paced pretty well & solid in substance but just had zero surprise & agency, and some strange choices.

The two biggest missteps to me were foregoing on onstage demo for Recore and demoing FF15 instead. That time could've been spent really blowing out a very cool looking game that releases in only 3 months & has nearly never been seen. Big disappointment there. Second misstep was revealing Scorpio. Felt like a reactionary thing because all of their show had been leaked. Scorpio should've had a glorious rollout with full list of features, deep dive on specs, show us the box, give us a price & most importantly, show us the kind of software possible on that hardware. What is a console reveal without a single game or at least tech demo? Just a very underwhelming way to make a huge announcement in my eyes.

Overall I'd still give the show a solid B...maybe it's because I saw something as terrible as EA play yesterday, but at the very least I was decently entertained through most of MS show, and the flow was there. Only part that fully lost me was the Minecraft stuff. Maybe if I played that game it'd be really cool but it just felt kinda strange.

[gangsta_red]

The pacing was good I guess.

But the biggest misteps in my opinion were,

- The Minecraft demo, unnecessary and not needed on stage. That commentary during gameplay was horrendous. This was pretty much the worse part of the show.

- Gwent!? I mean seriously, Witcher 3's card game needed to be announced on stage? I almost thought that was a joke.

- No Crackdown 3! This to me was the biggest mistake, show something at least, anything!

- Play Anywhere, yes, that was the theme of the show. But I like to think people are not stupid and that you can get that message across at the end or beginning of your show and not have to hammer that in our heads for every game you show off.

[sangoku_d]

recore is a budget game

[jb227]

@gangsta

Yeah those are all very valid. I guess they will show off Crackdown at Gamescom? It's the only place left to show off an actual demo of Recore, which they'll need to do to save face from the people underwhelmed by this trailer...hopefully gameplay for State of Decay 2....Fair bit seemed to be pushed to Gamescom or potentially remaining silent entirely this year.

I'm kinda of the mind these days that there are too many conferences & too many stray announcements all through the year so everything feels underwhelming on the whole. So far if this E3 has proven anything, it may be it's current irrelevancy. MS are far from the only ones with fair to middling conferences so far...

[nix]

at that minecraft part when they finally shoot down an alien ship, the conversation was like:

"great shot"
"thanks"
"let's get out of here"

i was like thank god... please do. lol.

[Onenyte]

I wouldn't say it was mistakes , just flat at points .

Dead raising 4 looked good

Scalebound looked OK

But recore was the let down IMO

But it was an overall average E3.

But I do feel it wouldn't take much to beat..........

[gangsta_red]

"But I do feel it wouldn't take much to beat.........."

Honestly, it would take minimal effort to beat MS's E3 this year.

[nix]

and looks like Dead Rising 4 is coming out on PS4 too. otherwise the board would have read "Xbox 1 and Windows 10 exclusive". instead, it read "Available on Xbox1 and Windows 10".

[Onenyte]

@nix

Good point on Dead Rising , tbh I did not notice that .

@gangsta

I feel the same , I have voice my opinion on the Forza franchise before , and I don't even feel that had enough to blow me away .

[Cryptcuzz]

"But I do feel it wouldn't take much to beat.........."

All it would take is actually showing off new/existing IP's in the works, more game play of some high profile games, and new games in development.

[Herbalistic]

The conference was for the hardcore Xbox guys/gals.it didn't convince me to run out and buy an Xbox

[remixx116]

You kidding me, it was barely for the hardcore. The cringe worthy ffxv and mine craft gameplay, not a single big announcement that we didn't see coming, no surprises, not enough info on Scorpio.

It was meh to be honest.

[Zeref]

I think the leaks ruined everything. There was literally nothing we didn't know about. Although seeing gameplay and having Project Scorpio confirmation is nice.

[travestyj]

What was there though for current Xbox owners? They basically just told them all previous announced games are going to PC while not announcing anything new and telling them their hardware is now out of date

[naruga]

Forza Horizon 3 was very good ( its interactive environments was a superb idea , reminding 90 racers with its organic environments) and Scalebound justifies its hype ..although there was nothing announced which hadnt leaked before ...

[TXIDarkAvenger]

I liked it. Maybe because I didn't set my expectations so high. Horizon 3 and more Scalebound was all I wanted to see and of course the show delivered more than that so I was satisfied.

[Spurg]

This will be a common theme for all conferences...
Ea no new ip
Bethesda no new ip apart from the re-reveal of prey
Ms no new ip only indie stuff and gameplay from they previously announced games.
Ubisoft: Most likely no new ip but show gameplay for there previously announced games.
Sony: Likely to have new ips but wont be surprised if they go all indie on us or announce little to nothing like Ms.

The main reason why is because of the emergence of the new consoles like the new Xbox and ps neo. They don't want to show anything yet because they want to save their new games for the future. So far this seems to be the only legit reason why they don't have any new announcements...its so unlikely that during E3, the main stage to announce new games, they haven't been any game or new ip announced. They want to set the stage for next year where they can fully show off the next gen of games along with everyone else. It wouldn't make sense if only one or two publishers reveals they titles for the next gen.

[Goldby]

it may also also be that the companies are starting to listen to the gamers, we dont want to see a game in 2013 at e3 with a 2016 release date. so as for the new ips they are probably either holding them back until they can get a more definitive release date for it or they will be holding more of their own press events to show off the games, that way all attention is just on them.

[Spurg]

No....no one holds their games to meet the gamers expectations. 3 years in a row Ms announces new games and all of a sudden they just stop just to meet the gamers expectations. The new console is a more definitive reason as to why they are holding back on there games.

[iDadio]

Pity anyone thinking the Scorpio will be native 4K

[Yetter]

6tflops can do 4K native. Its appox a 980ti, and unlike the PC this is a closed architecture so with in a year or two when the devs learn how to squeeze the all the power out of the thing 4k will be a given.

[iDadio]

Ultra settings 60fps 4K takes 2 1080 so unless the graphics of these games is going to be severely scaled down or merely be up scaled it isn't gunna happen without serious magic

[Dark_Knightmare2]

No way dude its going be upscaled which my 4k TV already does. It will in no way be running native 4k hell most pcs can't do native 4k

[WelkinCole]

lol! at the people disagreeing with you.

[Yetter]

"Testing: GeForce GTX 980 Ti 4K Benchmarks
BY NORMAN CHAN ON MAY 31, 2015 AT 6 P.M.
This is the card to get if you need to build a 4K gaming rig today."

http://www.tested.com/tech/...

a 6tflop card. The same one I have in my PC, the same PC that I play 4K games on

[iDadio]

http://www.tested.com/tech/...

You mean those old games at barely 30fps on the 980ti. It simply isn't going to be capable for new games

[Yetter]

"For the same given paper spec, a console will deliver twice the perf of a PC, and a PC will deliver twice the perf of a mobile part."

- John Carmack

https://twitter.com/id_aa_c...

[MasterCornholio]

That was before DX12 though.

Plus I honestly don't believe the Scorpio will perform in the same level as a 12 TF PC.

[Manic2014]

It was good 6.5/10 for me. Mainly due to the leaks ruining the show, and they have announced many games too early.

Hopefully they to plan to show more new content during Gamescom, I think they might since this conference did not have that much content for 2017.

[Sm00thNinja]

Microspft sent a confusing message the whole PR department should have been let go long before

[2pacalypsenow]

I wonder if the Scorpio is an actual console or just a steambox styled computer with an Xbox logo

[LoveSpuds]

I was very underwhelmed by the Gears demo, thought it looked nice but nothing new. Forza looked quite cool but at yhat point I started to get a touch of de ja vu. The same sequels time and again.

I think Scalebound looks promising personally, quite a leap in visuals and gameplay from its announcement. I am not much of a multiplayer gamer but thought Sea of Thieves looked cool too, loved its art design and the water effects looked fab.

Very interested to see how the Scorpio shakes out, they have my attention for sure. Overall I think mediocre is a little harsh (never thought I would be defending MS!).

[DarkSniper]

Microsoft's E3 Press Conference is more proof that Microsoft lacks the savvy and know how to become a first place player in the gaming industry. Microsoft's announcement of multiple different Xbox consoles is going to confuse and alienate the already limited Xbox userbase. Their gaming lineup consisted of me-too titles and sequels to games that we have been bored with for decades. Microsoft's lack of ingenuity and forward thinking has really exposed their ineptitude at knowing what the gamers want.

Dark Sniper cannot wait for the feature presentation tonight at 6pm PST where he can learn what the future of gaming really has in store for him. Observing the reactions of the Xbox Scorpio, it looks like it is doomed for failure much like the Sega 32X in the 90's. With some luck and prayer, hopefully this spells the beginning of the end for Microsoft. It sure seems to be that way.

$niper

[2pacalypsenow]

did you just refer to yourself in the third person?

[remixx116]

Nah he was obviously talking about the other dark sniper....

[nix]

you don't know him that well, do you? he's always been speaking like that.

[cfc83]

cfc83 thinks he did

[2pacalypsenow]

I dont want to know him after that

[badz149]

THE DarkSniper is here. Hello...but please keep the optimism for Sony's conference at the low. DarkSniper doesn't want to be disappointed, right?

[MrEnglish]

Your entire final paragraph...... just wow

[WelkinCole]

Man long time no see Snipe. Been what?. 5 years?. Good to see you again old friend.

[Sunny_D]

Hahaha, classic DarkSniper.

Always great to see your posts.

[PizzaSteve]

B+ conference. A lot better than last years.

[MrSwankSinatra]

You're full of BS on this one. The conference was definitely solid.

[iluvmaPS3]

Lol

[Ausbo]

As someone who only owns an Xbox, I agree it was underwhelming. The Scorpio announcement was awesome, but they really didn't announce any new games except state of decay 2. The leaks undermined a lot as well.

Sony shouldn't have much trouble trouncing this briefing.

At least it was a hell of a lot better than EA's snooze fest

[Bobafret]

I am dizzy from rolling my eyes at your goofy words.

[Yetter]

I'm a little surprised, I thought this was a great showing. Almost all real gameplay, Gears looks awesome, Forza Horizon looks great if you're into open world racing games (Im not) Scalebound looks way better than last year. State of Decay 2 has me very excited. And getting real sea of thieves gameplay and it being pretty much exactly what I want it to be. Top it all off they announced the Scorpio which any serious console gamer should be stupid excited for

[iluvmaPS3]

Wrong

[Brohan]

I love the fact that fan boys like to make these Opinion pieces they always have their own bias agenda.

[nix]

hahaha... but this is different. it's coming from Septic's site. i mean he's the one of the biggest known xbox fanboys here. remember his "xbox 1 has won 3 holidays in a row" article?

[S2Killinit]

It was sort of meh. The best thing there was a game that was already announced last year.

[SegaGamer]

It's was half and half for me. Some good, some bad, nothing amazing.

[GamePeace]

Not really impressive if you ask me. I found it rather boring. They couldn't convince me to purchase their products.

[killer_goat]

Definitely was disappointing and boring. Watching ubi's show now. Hopefully sony's will be good. They seem to have their show locked up tight.

[DeadManMMX]

It had some groan moments namely Final Fantasy gameplay fail and I always think long game play demos are boring but I was happy overall. Most of the games looked great.

[ILostMyMind]

Nice trailer from Forza Horizon 3

[ElementX]

I think it was a decent showing. With cross-buy/cross-play coming does that mean I can play co-op PC/Xbox with a friend? My PC and Xbox are in the same room and it will be a game changer, no more split screen for some games.

[WelkinCole]

Scorpio is great with its reported power and finally confirmed but that in itself and holiday 2017 release date presents problems for the current x1 and x1s.

[showtimefolks]

Sad part is now sony won't show much either. Last year ms set the bar high and sony demolished it

Now we will hear about 3rd party but I think sony will hold back few exclusives to be revealed later in their other conferences

This e3 so far has been the most boring one. We knew almost about every announcement beforehand

Leaks and rumors have pretty much spoiled e3 this year

[Xavy]

Yeah thats what i'm afraid of. Hope not.

[showtimefolks]

i hope sony comes out guns blazing like last year and play to their on tones and no worry about what others have shown or not shown

RDR2
dead don't ride
god of war
next call of duty
FF15 demo/bundle announcement
VR talk

god of war and RDR2 announcement alone will put all the spotlight on ps4

[DigitalCentralMedia]

I completely agree with you. Every single E3 Conference so far has been mediocre

[Elda]

They basically showed what they did last year just updated including NO new original exclusive ip's,the show was lame.

[rigo8582]

I thought it was pretty good. I thought the pacing was good. Only thing I didn't like was the minecraft and indie shit.

[uth11]

Agreed apart from Scorpio, it was underwhelming- not bad, but no real surprises.

[rightway]

All the games they showed are for 2016, early 2017 hardly a disappointing show. And, its obvious now why we saw no games for late 2017 and 2018. The Scorpio will be shown off at E3 2017 with new launch titles.

[Tobsesan]

It wasnt that great, but we saw games we actually get this year with fun gameplay. Cant wait for Halo Wars 2, Forza Horizon 3, Recore and Gears 4.
We probably get a few new games at gamescom, but we will see.

[Sweendog007]

abzdiine So basically you just proved my point you agreed with an article that you only watched half of, you didn't like the bits you saw yet agree with an article that's talking about over all.

Fair enough you didn't like the parts you saw, but to agree with this article is stupid them especially when you are agreeing with stuff you didn't see , and if you did see you might have had a Diffrent view from this article.

Entitled to your view by all means but rather silly to agree with something you didn't see only bits. That's like me going to see a movie half way through and saying it was shit ... Of course it's going to be shit as I missed the begging and half no idea about the story or what happened before

[Eiyuuou]

I was following it to see of they would sjow new IP's.

I was greeted with Minecraft cringe instead...

[REDDURT]

Even accepting the leaks it was weak sauce.

[Sweendog007]

Has anyone actaully thought about the fact it was an average press conference because this site along with other sites ruined e3 this year by leaking everything ... Everything they announced maybe one or 2 things was not announced yesterday .. In view the media ruined e3 this year

Even ea stuff was leaked , even the Bethesda stuff was leaked ... What's the point in e3 now if sites like this are just going to exploit everything and then complain and say their events are dull or average

[jb227]

Sony's leaks have been strangely absent though. Really Sony has the only shot at being the saving grace in terms of surprises this year. They could make relatively minor game announcements & still take the cake.

The leak culture is only becoming more pervasive. It'll be on all forms (games, film, tv) to find a way to roll with the changes. Ultimately you can't blame the gaming journalists for just reporting the news. That's what we keep them around for...lord knows it ain't for the hard hitting think pieces...

[Sweendog007]

Sony will show the same games as they did last year , as a lot of their games were due out this year ... Heavy focus on PlayStation VR, announce coming in 2017 a new crash game which has been leaked ( sorry rumoured ) , and announce a new ps4k that will support 4K content , maybe one or 2 announcers regarding PlayStation tv

Everything has been leaked the past 2 weeks , that's why no one is suprised. Sony stuff has been leaked or rumoured as they put it , unless you are not reading the articles.

E3 was basically showen over the past 2 weeks without the cofrences ... Everyone knew about Xbox slim and scorpion , Sony will focus on VR and gaurdian , call of duty will be there at Sony ... What els , final fantasy and an update on the game that went into a kick start fund last year ... Sony cofrences will show in game footage of last years stuff this time

[PFFT]

It was decent. Cant wait for Dead Rising 4, State of Decay 2, Recore, Sea of Thieves and Scalebound!
Ahh and Scorpio gotta start saving up for Scorpio.

[IIFloodyII]

So it's not worth watching? missed it due to being in work, and only know about the Scorpio, so should I watch it or not?

[jb227]

If you also know the leaked games, there's zero new in the conference...it's worth scrubbing through though just to see the cool bits. I wouldn't expect much beyond that though.

[IIFloodyII]

Thanks, will probably just watch all the trailers they released then.

[Yetter]

Do you like MS's games? There was gameplay for pretty much every game they've got coming including, Gears4, ForzaH3, Recore, Sea of Thieves, We Happy Few Dead Rising and Scalebound. HaloWars2 beta starts today.
no real gameplay shown for StateofDecay2 but the trailer looks more of what made the first one so good.

Only real no show was Crackdown which has been confirmed it has been pushed to 2017.

I guess thats the one surprising thing. Really only Gears and FH3 out this year for big games anyways. The rest is 2017

and Inside comes out this month which I'm excited for.

All in all I really enjoyed the conference but I like MS's games

[IIFloodyII]

How do I get into the Halo Wars 2 beta? That was the one thing I was really looking forward to.

Thanks for the write up on the rest too. Sounds like it was a decent conference, that was just ruined a bit by leaks.

[Yetter]

search for halo wars 2 in the store and itll pop up

I've downloaded but probably won't get to play today

[D2K]

Well....the beginning and end are definitely worth watching, but the middle has a lot of parts left to be desired. I can't believe they wasted time talking about Battlefield 1 when they showed footage that we LITERALLY just seen yesterday at EA's presser. That could have been time allocated to Crackdown 3 which I guess isn't ready to be shown yet.

[D2K]

It started out great, then got really stale, and got interesting again at the end. A very hi-lo type event. Averages out to a C+ for me. Maybe a B- for the simple fact that Microsoft had the "testicular fortitude" to stand out there and say that Project Scorpio WILL be THE most powerful console EVER. That's real ballsy, and I like it.

[Yetter]

Well from what we know now, it will be as the specs for the Neo are out. That being said nothing is for certain at this point. If the Neo is coming out this year, its gonna be hard for Sony to upgrade the GPU at this point, but who knows

[D2K]

Sony has a history of giving Microsoft enough rope to hang themselves. It will be interesting to see if Sony trolled Microsoft into thinking that the leaked specs were true and then come back with the Neo having a more powerful set up. I guess we'll see. It's interesting that Microsoft did not state what type of CPU was in Scorpio or talk about it at all outside of mentioning it is a 8-core processor which doesn't really tell you anything definative.

For all we know like the Neo CPU it could just be 2 overclocked Jaguar CPUs like the Neo "allegedly" has. Technically the XB1 CPU is more powerful than the PS4 CPU. Even so, if Scorpio is using a Polaris-based GPU than I would think that an older CPU like the Jaguar would create bottlenecks. It's possible that Scorpio could be using the AMD 'Excavator' CPU which is the predecessor to the AMD 'Zen' CPU. Or the could be going with the Zen itself. I think that if Scorpio turns out to indeed be the XBOX 2 then I think they will go with the Zen CPU and a customized Polaris 10 GPU.

[TimelessDbz]

Recore looks fun
Forza looks fun
We happy few looks very interesting
Dragon scale looked amazing (Co op!)
Sea of thieves looks fun
Cup head looks fun
Gears of War 4 looks fun
Solid A in my book

[Bronxs15]

i found it to be an awesome showing. game after game being shown off and three new pieces of exciting hardware.

[Gazda]

it wasnt bad

[cfc83]

It was saved by the Scorpio mega bomb in a way, especially as it will run fallout 4 in VR. Otherwise they basically just showed footage on what they announced last year. However i think there's decent stuff there, and halo wars 2 open beta is out now.

[jrshankill]

Most powerful console in existence announced... "mediocre showing"...

Fanboys

[PistolsAtDawn]

Medicore? Are you F'n high? It was fantastic...literally the ONLY thing I wasn't interested in was Tekken...and that's just cause I don't care for fighting games. Every game had gameplay...most are coming out soon...if not, early 2017 ish. (yet people complain about announcing games too early. They killed it with Slim and Scorpio...esp since Slim starts at only $299 and already upreses every game to 4k with HDR, and is a 4k Blu-ray player cheaper than 4k Blu-ray players of it's caliber on the market. They killed it with making it so generations start and end when the gamer chooses...all games and hardware moving forward and backwards (obviously there will have to be SOME limit to forward). That was really my only concern with new consoels, but essentially they removed that whole "gen" barrier al together. If you WANT to upgrade great, if you don't that's ok too. MS opened up the abilitiy the play and purchase games across a wider array of gamers, making it easier for devs and gamers alike (and giving Devs a wider market to work with). As the Dead rising guys said, making the games similtaniously for PC and X1 was seamless. They've already admitted they knew this was coming and was part of the design feature behind scale-able res. Gears 4 already supports the higher res and HDR. Literally everytime MS was given a question/concern...they responded correctly. EVERY feature they presented was a welcome addition, every game looked fantastic and nearly ready to play. The ONLY thing I can possibly complain about is that Crackdown 3 wasn't there, but apparently it's cause they want to show it at gamescon. The rest of this year, there are already more MUST HAVES than since this gen launched. I have a hard time believing any true gamer would find MS's E3 anything short of fantastic...then again, there are definitely some jaded fanboys out there.

Not to mention that in one swift second, they already took over the console VR space, and just a few months ago people thought MS wasn't even in it...now suddenly THE dominant option.

The biggest indication of how well MS did is the flood of canned response complaints it's getting from people that clearly had their mind made up before the show...people that WANTED MS to fail and refuse to see otherwise. Most of the complaints make me even wonder if they person watched the show at all....cause their complaints are factually incorrect by a LONG shot. The amount of sad fanboy trolls is annoying, esp when all they want to do is be negative all the time. Pathetic. Why game if it pisses you off so much? All I know is I've been having the best time gaming of my life, and MS looks like a huge reason it's going to get a ton better.

Edit: My prediction is now that MS is making the ecosystem timeless and bridging the gap between console and PC...now that "generations" no longer mean anything to Xbox...I think we may see a new one every 3 -5 years. Esp since it's OPTIONAL to upgrade and DX12 makes developing for PC/X1 so seamless. So rather than spending tons of money to keep gaming on PC relevant, just every couple years upgrade your streamlined console if it makes a big enough difference to you.

Edit 2: This site is so toxic to the true gaming community. Fanboys clearly have no interest in progressing the gaming industry...just what label does it. Pathetic. They don't even realize all the great gaming they are missing by holding onto a hollow/thankless incorrect bias for no reason.

[P_Bomb]

The thing you gotta take into consideration is that a lot of people *just* bought their current gen consoles within the past couple years/months/days and probably aren't too gung-ho about doing it again, so soon, before they've had a proper return on their investment. The only big reveal at this conference seems to be just that, new hardware. Some people were hoping for more software surprises. Can't fault them.

Personally, the Sea of Thieves trailer with the streamer screamer commentary annoyed more than impressed. Everyone knew Gears/Forza was coming. I can understand where some people felt left out.

[iluvmaPS3]

You made me dumber

[PistolsAtDawn]

Impossible

[jb227]

Chill.

This read is coming from one of the biggest Xbox fans on this site. The conference may be underwhelming to some because Scorpio was all talk, no proof & there were no new games that weren't leaked. Gaming is about games after all, and if you don't show off any new wares at a conference built around them, you are going to breed disappointment.

The conference was potentially a great setup for the future of Xbox, but for the here & now it had some issues. Saying '6 tflops' &' alone isn't enough to blow the doors off for everyone.

That fanboy stuff goes both ways though Pistol. I look forward to your thoughts on Sony's conference because I absolutely know beyond the shadow of a doubt they will be negative. You've said yourself that anything Sony should be brought down 10 points in score & anything MS brought up 10 points in score on principle alone so you ain't quite the most trusted source of unbiased opinions to anyone around N4G.

[PistolsAtDawn]

My comment about X1 10 points up and PS "5-10" points down (don't misquote me). Was DIRECTLY related to how Metacritic deals with scoring. It's not specifically Sony or MS...it's Metacritic...and I stand by that comment...it's not even close to fanboyish at all. Not to mention, I was VERY clear in saying that it's just usually how it works out for me by the time I'm done playing a game that, that is how the score works out for me vs what Metacritic scored it...but of course you would take it out of context and of course you would mis-quote me, and of course you would fanboyishly try to use it as proof that I am a fanboy, when really...if you take a step back it's not fanboyish at all. I didn't say sony sucks, or everything they do is garbage...I said the coverage of reviews for MS and PS aren't on the same page and PS game reviews get away with things that MS games get hammered for....like we are seeing here with this conference. People complain that at E3 games are usually shown too far in advance with no gameplay...today MS showed tons of gameplay of games coming this year and early 2017...now it's "there aren't enough things about new games in the future". I'm sure Sony's Conference will be fine..although there haven't been any juicy rumors at all (true MS's best rumors were leaked, so I can see THAT as being why some people weren't surprised, but the work was put in by MS). I expect Sony to be focusing mainly on VR this time around...and since there haven't even been any hints of juicy rumors from Sony, anything would be a pleasant surprise...as it stands right now, the next PS exclusive game I'm looking forward to is Horizon, which is 2017. So it'd be great if they announced a nice title between now and then....then again, there are ALREADY soooooooooo many amazing games I need to play between now and then anyway...they could announce nothing in that time span and I'd be ok. I expect Sony to do a lot of 3rd party deals and VR this E3, anything above that would be icing on the cake.

The downplay of MS's conference is ridiculous, they did everything right..yeah like every E3 from every Dev/Company...there were some cheesy/scripted moments...like the Minecraft demo....but the tech and things behind that demo were great. MS did everything right this E3, and my ONLY concern about Scorpio was wiped away....being forward and backward compat is PERFECT....esp now that they've confirmed that games like Fallout 4 will be using Occulus/Vive for VR.

[Outside_ofthe_Box]

"My comment about X1 10 points up and PS "5-10" points down (don't misquote me). Was DIRECTLY related to how Metacritic deals with scoring. It's not specifically Sony or MS...it's Metacritic...and I stand by that comment...it's not even close to fanboyish at all."

lol You sure that's not "fanboyish at all"? lol

According to that, you're saying that no PS game is a 9/10 or greater and that most X1 games are.

Yup, not "fanboyish at all."

-Edit- I'm surprised Septic wrote this article. This definitely was not MS's best E3, but Scorpio was a huge surprise for sure.

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

You would have to be a deluded fanboy to think this show was impressive. I've been an Xbox Owner since 2002. This is the worst show they have had since the 2013 blunder. I personally don't like the direction Phil is taking the division either. It promising old IPS, yet I don't see the games he teases, ever !

[PistolsAtDawn]

You're ridiculous, with that attitude just stop gaming, you're clearly not concerned about gaming at all, just fanboy wars.

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

@PistolsAtDawn
Good E3 conferences, show games and don't anchor themselves around hardware, one the Xbox One S offers nothing for me. The Xbox "Code name Scorpio is over a year away, and based on the specs, I probably won't be able to afford it, and I really don't know the capabilities of the machine either. Does it just play games in 4k with the same graphics and framerate as the vanilla Xbox One or does it offer higher frame rates and better graphics . 6 teraflop cards today often struggle with 4k graphics, even when paired with an i7 CPU.

Scalebound, ReCore and Sea of Thieves were all shafted at the conference. They deserved more screen time, instead all three of the previously mentioned titles were given a back seat to 3rd party games, crossplay and Minecraft. I will make an exception for Halo Wars 2 , since you can download the Beta and try it yourself.

I wasn't shown any new or revived IPs, which Phil Spencer loves to hype! I want to see gameplay, not hardware and certainly not a bunch of awkward fake gamers on stage. Phil teases Battletoads, it wasn't there , he teases Perfect Dark it wasn't there . A Phantom Dust remaster was announced and it wasn't done on stage lol.

Edit: I forgot about State of Decay 2, since MS failed to show me anything about the game at the conference lol.

[Mr-Dude]

@pistols
I am a primary PS4 user, I watch every stream. I really liked the Sea Of Thieves demo, We Happy Few gave me a Bioshock vibe, and when I saw Akuma vs Heihachi, I got a good scare hehe. But the rest was not that good. Scorpio way to soon imo, and they announce another console aswell. Really confusing message..

I thought when I saw the intro for FH3 that you X1 fans finally gotten a nice adventure game... But no...... another racer.

[etownone]

what a disappointment Gears 3... i was expecting to be blown away with Unreal 4 tech

[PC-Gaming-1990]

Was okay better than last year not sure how announcing Xbox One Slim will work out when ending the show with Project Scorpio..In terms of games there was not really any surprises all stuff we expected only things that i enjoyed Buying a game for W10 gives me it on Xbox One, Sea Of Thieves,Horizon 3 and Recore looked great the rest for me was just average or stuff i had no interest in.

[Hoffmann]

Mediocre indeed.

[3-4-5]

Forza Horizon 3 looks awesome, Sea of Thieves has potential....Halo Wars 2 could be decent to good.....Solid showing, nothing amazing but the slim XB1 & the Scorpio announcement were pretty cool as well.

[Livecustoms]

I'd give it an 8/10. EA would get a 5/10 and I would give Bethesda a 7/10. Hopefully Sony can come out with a 10/10 ! (One can hope atleast XD)

[PistolsAtDawn]

Sounds like you have your mind made up already

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

Positives
- Xbox One S looks cool, affordable, Scorpio announcement might damage it's potential sales performance.
- Customization of Controller colors
-Scalebound looks good (I will likely hate the lead character)
-Gears of War 4 looks good, deceptive marketing (was XB1 only during the beta)
-ReCore looks good but crappy pop music in trailer
- Forza Horizon 3 and Dead Rising looks good for fans of the series

Negatives
-No new or revived first party IPs. Phil likes to talk about old IPs, yet seems to refuse to fund them ...
-Over focus on third party, they promote Tekken, despite MS having their own fighting game ?
-Same awful Battlefield 1 fake gameplay trailer as EA
-Trailers with stupid licensed pop music
- Minecraft promoted too much, the game literally sells itself. Stage demo was too long.
-State of Decay 2 needed more stage time. Didn't discuss new gameplay at all.
-Gwent got more stage time than several first party games.
-Indies, one had more stage time than actual first party games. Indies don't sell consoles.
-Sea of Thieves, gameplay reveal ruined by over the top gamers, revival should of been longer, at least comparable to the Indie game reveal.
-Crossplay/buy was talked about more than the games themselves.
-No Crackdown
-Halo Wars 2 needed more stage time, more gameplay, unit demonstration etc
- RAAM for Killer Instinct, had no character demonstration, Tekken got more promotion than Killer Instinct, a first party game.
-Pointless Scorpio reveal
-Hopefully Gamescon is better

- Overall grade D, would of been an F, if not for the First Party games all looking solid. Last year was B to B +, big drop in conference quality from last year.

[PistolsAtDawn]

F'n ridiculous. You're the worst kind of "gamer" just give up already.

[Livecustoms]

Hate people like you, what even is a 'real gamer' we all enjoy different types of games and genre's like seriously sort it out !

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

I'm the worst kind of gamer? I beat over a dozen games every year on multiple platforms. I give constructive criticism and I don't sugar coat for any console, developer, publisher or game. Nor do I troll like the rabid deluded gamers that think MS or Sony loves them.

[PrinterMan]

Does the Play Anywhere deal require any MS Live membership? Will it force PC users to get one o be able to play online.?

[2600Thunder]

The whole E3 has essentially been time consuming mediocrity and filler.

EDIT: I posted right after Ubisoft, so I am hoping someone, anyone, will save the show. Hashtag SaveE3.

[nyobzoo]

yea it's a shame that a 3rd of their conference was leaked already and then throw in the most likely Gears/Halo/Forza, you already have 2/3rd conference gone. They really needed something amazing to show outside of those and they didn't

[Saito]

Specs are cool they are, but I need games man. Specs won't keep me entertained. This is gaming. SHOW ME GAMES!!!! ITS DRIVING ME CRAZY TIRED OF THESE CONSOLES COME GAMES

[King_Lothric]

I feel the same about the conference. I don't consider it to be bad but it was like.. Ok. There were no new big games surprises and I felt the tone was like: we were humiliated by the weak xbox One performance so we are going to build the most spensive console in the world so no one, no one, ever say we have a weak console ever!!!

Other than that Scale bound was good but it wasn't something new. "Play everywhere" is something that Sony has done a long time ago with cross play between Vita, PS3 and PS4. Groups, is basically communities on PS4 and Forza was good but again, expected and not new.

[MagicBeanz]

Total lackluster showing from Microsoft.

[Sweendog007]

Snap ... Told you everything has been leaked already that's why you find the comfrences dull now

Sony is the same , focus on VR and showing games that have been talked about the past 2 weeks , a new Spider-Man , new game from the developer of metal gear , crash games ... Ps4k will end the show ... Yet bloggers on this site will praise Sony.

E3 is already over before it beggings with all this leaking stuff

[polymacon]

Gears was such a bore. Recore, Sea Of Thieves, Forza Horizon 3 looked great