By: Tyler Miller
Everything was in place. With Sony choosing not to participate in E3 this year and talk of the next generation of consoles ramping up, the stars had aligned perfectly for Microsoft. They would be the show of E3 that everyone wanted to see and they would be able to kick off the week in a big way. They were even talking it up to be this “show to beat all other shows.” Unfortunately they didn’t do that and treated this year’s conference like any other one.
Head of Xbox Phil Spencer came out on stage at the start of the show and got us all excited. As he always does, he told us that we would be seeing a large number of games at the show and that most of them would be coming to their Xbox Game Pass program. We also had their Xbox Games Studios titles to look out for. These are the games that the world is most excited for ever since Microsoft announced some major acquisitions last year. But what did we see this year?
Well we saw a lot of trailers for games, but very little of them were shocking or super exciting. The show started with The Outer Worlds, Obsidian’s new game. It’s our second time seeing it and the footage showcased some gameplay which was cool, but it was nothing too extensive. Then Ninja Theory came out and revealed their new game Bleeding Edge which got a cool trailer. The trailer showcased what the game would look when it’s being played, but it wasn’t hard gameplay. This continued to be a running theme throughout the press conference; showing games that look cool, but not giving really any gameplay for them. That’s not to say that every game that’s shown in an E3 press conference needs to have gameplay shown as well, but it would be nice for some of the games, particularly the big important ones, to demonstrate some gameplay.
Perhaps the biggest offender of this was Gears 5. We got a cinematic trailer for the game that focused on Kait, and then a CG trailer for the game’s new Escape mode, but not a single bit of gameplay. The last time we saw the game was at E3 last year and with the game three months away, now would be the perfect time to show off some more of the game’s campaign to get fans excited. But instead we got another trailer for Gears POP! that showed off some gameplay (as short as that bit of gameplay was). At least a release date was given for Gears 5.
There were a number of third party games on the stage as well, but not too many of them were all that exciting, and not many of them gave us much to get excited about with their trailers. The most interesting game that appeared on the stage out of everything was Annapurna’s 12 Minutes, and that’s saying something when your conference has games such as Cyberpunk 2077 the From Software and George R. R. Martin collaboration Elden Ring in it, as well as Halo Infinite as the closer.
Yes Microsoft ended the show with the announcement of their next-gen console Project Scarlett and Halo Infinite, the title that will be launching alongside the system. Project Scarlett is going to be a beast of a console if everything Microsoft said about it is true, but we didn’t get to really see just what it could do during the show. Sure the Halo Infinite footage was running in engine, but it was essentially a cutscene that we saw with no actual gameplay.
If there was ever a time to get us excited about their next console, that was it right there. A gameplay demo of Halo Infinite, their flagship franchise running on Project Scarlett hardware. It would’ve showcased everything that Microsoft was hyping up with their system and put them ahead in the next-gen race. But instead, they dropped the ball and did nothing to get us hyped for their next console. All we have is a name, a game that showed no gameplay, and a bunch of buzzwords to get us excited.
Right now, Microsoft is behind Sony in the “console wars” and they know it. With Sony not at the show, this was their chance to get a lead on the next generation and give everyone a reason to be an Xbox now or next-gen, but they didn’t take it. They’re sitting right where they were before and have given Sony a chance to gather themselves and not rush to make their big next-gen push, whenever that is. Their E3 press conference wasn’t necessarily a bad show, but it could’ve and absolutely should’ve been bigger and better than it ended up being.
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