Congrats to @deliciousbees for taking this year's Microsoft banner contest in a landslide! bawalo's Cortana "Giant Plum" banner took 2nd place while alcor741's Xbox highlights banner was a very close 3rd!

The Official E3 2016 Microsoft Press Conference Discussion

It's officially E3 time, duders! If you haven't experienced the insanity of E3 before, the show starts off with press conferences from each of the three console makers as well as a few of the largest publishers in the industry. These presentations are prime real estate for game announcements, debut trailers, live gameplay demonstrations, and meme origins.

In an attempt to keep the E3 shenanigans organized, the mods institute these official discussion threads for each conference so that everybody has a go-to place to discuss them before, during, and after the show.

Keep Discussions On Topic

This thread is exclusively for the general discussion of the Microsoft press conference. Only discussion of the Ubisoft press conference is allowed. Discussion involving the other company's conferences should be taken to their respective threads (once they're posted). And don't even think about going off-topic or derailing the thread with your bone preferences on chicken wings.

Specific Announcements

E3 is THE place for announcing never before seen games. It's exciting, fast-paced stuff and we're all enthusiastic to start talking about all the new toys. But, please keep in-depth discussions about specific games in their respective forums. For more information about how to help us keep things organized, go check out the E3 2016 and You! thread.

To help you get where you need to go to talk about anything announced or shown during this press conference, we have created a list of them right here:

• Crackdown 3
• Gears of War 4
• ???

Despite the insanity of E3, keep in mind that the general site rules still apply. So, don't be a jerk. If you need a refresher on how to conduct yourself like an upstanding citizen of the Giant Bomb community, check out the FAQ.

Where Can I Watch?

Monday, June 13 @ 9:30 AM PDT - Galen Center (Local Time)

• Giant Bomb Chat
• Xbox.com
• Xbox One
• E3 Insider.com
• SpikeTV

Wholeheartedly support @deliciousbees banner for winning. That one is just incredible!

That's an amazing banner.

That's a pretty good banner, I tell ya what! Bring on the next conference! I sincerely hope that things go at least half as magically as they did yesterday. I'm excited about video games, but I'm even more excited about people being awkward on stage. I can't even think of anything specific I'd like to see from Microsoft today other than something that will make me cringe/shake my head in all the right ways. I am a terrible person.

The right banner won. Let's hope there's a new Viva Pinata today!

Wasn't HDR the buzz word in *2005* with Half-Life Lost Coast? Why is it back in marketing circles??

@whitegreyblack said:

HDR in Half-Life was a rendering technique whereas HDR as part of the 4K push is a collection of hardware enhancements. It basically means significantly better contrast and a wider colour gamut than what you'd get with older panels.

@conmulligan: Ah, okay. It's all so confusing, and no one has bothered to explain it yet. It just keeps popping up in sizzle reels as a buzz term.

@whitegreyblack: Yeah, it's bizarre that they haven't actually taken a second to explain what it means.

That new State of Decay logo is really inspired.

That Scorpio reveal was kinda surprising.

"True" 4K?? This is fucking crazy. Consoles chasing the "best graphics" specs seems insane. Consoles cannot win that arms race, can they? PC will always be ahead and I cannot see Sony or Microsoft doing well by entering that particular arms race, especially when they need to ensure compatibility with the original systems.

Amazing banner. The conference was "eh", except for Sea of Thieves and We Happy Few, which I'm afraid will suffer of the whole randomly generated world.

Considering neither current console can even reliably pull off 1080p / 60fps--and often not even 900p /60fps--I don't believe it for a second. My guess is that it will still have specs better than the Neo, but "true" 4K won't turn out to be native 4K.

Regarding Project Scorpio:

@spaceinsomniac: Probably. It definitely made my eyebrows jump up when they said "true 4K"... and then I got a little uneasy.

The graphics game at the moment is so "cart before the horse" it's not even funny (i.e. framerates and stability are janky as hell but the focus is still on shaders, graphical fidelity, and resolution), and this race for 4K does not make me feel overly confident that still won't be the case when Project Scorpio comes to market.

Beautiful.

Man, that press conference has me feeling some kind of way. I watched game after game and was trying to find a reason to care about some of larger stuff that was coming out, and struggling a little. Gears is done, I buried that series, I don't need to dig it up again. That demo looked, graphically at least, excellent. But I don;t think I'd pull a trigger on this thing unless it was very inventive. Scalebound, State of Decay, both non starters. Both of the We Happy Few and Inside were rather compelling. Cuphead is cool looking, whether or not I have fun with it is up in the air, also where is Below? That game got anounced like 4 years ago and we haven't heard jack. I'm a driving guy, so Forza Horizon 3 looked cool, but also I've been drifting away from open world and off road driving disciplines in favor of open wheel stuff. Final Fantasy didn't show well but I've seen better slices of it that keep me hopeful. I've never played a Final Fantasy game but I would be more inclined to try the Final Fantasy 7 Remake before 15. I know 15 will come out before 7 but I'll wait for a verdict before deciding. Custom controllers are cool though, the color options are great.

As an Xbox player who is looking across the isle, so to speak, at Sony and their console exclusive games, this E3 is vital in deciding if I really want to keep going with Xbox. They had some stuff I liked but also some stuff that wasn't exciting that they thought was supposed to be, in my opinion. Overall, I really need to see what Sony show before I make any decisions, but right now I'm not too stoked about keeping on the path I'm on. I'll still keep my Xbox and play stuff that comes out, but baring a major revelation, it won't be my primary system. Scorpio does sound cool, but I don't know what the cool exclusive games look like for that system, hopefully games I like come out for it and I have a reason to stick around, but I'm not holding my breath.

@spaceinsomniac said:

If the rumours are true and Scorpio is using the equivalent of an RX 480 (which would more or less line up with the 6 teraflops figure Microsoft touted) then it should totally be capable of running most current games at 2160p@30Hz, albeit with some compromises made elsewhere in the graphics pipeline. Whether or not developers decide to target that resolution as opposed to a higher framerate or an emphasis on more sophisticated rendering techniques remains to be seen, but on paper it's a plausible assertion.

Whether or not this still proves plausible 12+ months from now is what has me scratching my bearded chin!

@conmulligan: It's the CPU choice that worries me most, I believe that they could output frames rendered at 4K but if they are just using an upclocked version of the Jaguar cores in the original Xbox One, I wouldn't have much faith in it hitting a stable 30fps while doing so.

Just like the PS4, Larry.

The Scorpio announcement is kind of weird, because it felt like it sucked the air out of their pretty good press conference. I still have no interest in getting an Xbox, but it was still fine. But since they closed with Scorpio, it feels like all anybody is going to talk about is Scorpio. Almost feels like they should have done this at Gamescom, especially since this isn't coming out until Holiday 2017.

Remember folks nvidia FLOPS /= AMD FLOPS.

@wastedcolumbo said:

I'd be shocked if that was the case, though. Assuming the Scorpio GPU uses the Polaris architecture — which is almost certainly the case — it would be surprising if MS didn't also use a Zen-based CPU, especially since AMD should be well into fabricating Zen/Polaris APUs at that point. Besides, resolution doesn't place nearly as much strain on the CPU as high framerates do, so even if they do just end up using a higher-clocked Jaguar CPU I don't think that would necessarily be any more of a bottleneck at 2160p@30Hz that it would at 1080p@30Hz.

@conmulligan: I am scratching my head trying to figure out how they can not use Zen and still remain price competitive with Sony's offering, which last time I read about it was going in that direction, either way I can't see it being much of a bump up in CPU performance without it being prohibitively expensive. Considering the CPU has been the bottleneck in more than a few games designed for a much lower spec GPU, it still worries me. I am still willing to make a bet that Bethesda gamebryo games will run like arse at 4k on these udated consoles.

Gotta give Microsoft props. As a PC gamer, I was weary when they said they were going to improve their support of PC gaming, and I think every game they talked about during the show was both Xbox One and PC. I'm really excited about Forza Horizon, and it was announced outside of the conference that Crackdown 3 is coming to PC as well.

Anyone else out there think Sea of Thieves seems kinda bad? Their teaser trailers have been fun and colorful, but then the in game footage looked real plain, like 10 years ago World of Warcraft plain. Their reliance on Youtube style commentary to make every little clip **amazing** certainly didn't help.

I'm actually really excited about what I saw during the Microsoft conference. I had so much fun playing Gears of War 2 and Horde Mode on local co-op, so the demo of the new game appealed to me. I was hoping for a new Forza announcement, and I got it, with a release in September, which is not far away. I got a chance to see some gameplay from ReCore and another release date for that also in September. And, seeing the announcements for Scalebound and Halo Wars 2 for 2017 caught my interest as well. That's 5 titles that I've been interested in seeing more coverage and learning more about. The other honorable mentions include Tekken 7 coming early 2017 and Inside, because, the atmosphere just looks haunting.

sigh, so far, E3 has been pretty "meh" for me. Everything Microsoft showed off looked great, don't get me wrong. However, none of those games were for me. Gears is a great franchise. It's not for me. Forza is a great franchise. I'm not really interested in another one. Sea of Thieves looks awesome. Not really my thing though. I'm looking forward to FFXV and Scalebound, but the on-stage demos were looking preeeeeetty boring. And so on and so on.

I'm not trying to be negative or anything. Again, I think Microsoft fucking knocked it out of the park. It's just that, once again, nothing in that press conference was really my cup of tea.

***I'll likely never own a Microsoft console since I've never liked how their paddle feels, but I always enjoy their conferences

• Microsoft Play Anywhere is a really cool feature even if I'll likely not own a PC either (at least until Microsoft / Sony become publishers on the PC platform and consoles are dead)

• Gears of War 4 looks like it'll have really cool set pieces. I did not enjoy playing Gears 2 at friends' houses in high school. Dialogue appeared terrible.

• I've been jealous of KI's exclusivity for a while now

• Forza Horizon 3 looked pretty damn cool. I wish the Gran Turismo franchise would take some similar chances.

• recore looks like a game.

• I am so fucking curious about Final Fantasy XV. Every news release says so much about it without saying anything at all, with so many "we are planning on this but it might not work out" comments. It looks gorgeous, but that Cerberus demo showed nothing and the demo they just showed was a mess.

• I will never play Minecraft. I'm honestly surprised it isn't free to play at this point though.

• Still jealous of Cuphead. That moon thing looked cool.Excited to see Stardew Valley mentioned, means console stuff is around the corner. Really want to play that. Hope Inside isn't a console exclusive but I wouldn't be surprised.

• We Happy Few looks very cool. Wonder what kind of game it is but that seems like a real interesting world.

• Gwent felt like a personal offense considering how huge and long Witcher 3 already was / is. I'm amazed anybody even took the time to figure that out let alone it became popular enough to become standalone.

• Tekken 7 looks very curious. Seems to be leaning into mechanics like the DC MK games, maybe just for story mode?

• Never played a Dead Rising game. I'd really like to play that one. Bummer.

• Scalebound makes me want a follow up to that Devil May Cry remake. The game itself looks really boring.

• Sea of Thieves looked interesting but it looked like it was entirely built for Youtubers and people with a lot of game playing friends. I'm neither.

• Scorpio sounds wild, but I'm still in a pretty hesitant camp being a console gamer, and someone who's been solely Playstation since the PS2. If consoles going forward will just be backwards compatible by the simple fact they are now designed like PCs are, why would I (or the 40 million other PS4 owners) ever get an XBox if they've switched to mostly digital purchases on their current PS4?

• And forgetting that, if my PS4 still plays all the games the PS Neo does, they just look a little less impressive, and there's not a subsidy plan for either of these consoles so the upgrades are costing $300-$500 rather than what this model is being compared to, phones, which regularly cost less than $100 thanks to wireless carrier contracts...does ANYONE want to spend that much money on their video game console every few years? I understand PC gamers do, but console gamers are not used to that, oftentimes buy into consoles specifically to dodge that bullet.

• Very well done press conference though, really positive energy and a lot of cool announcements that raise interesting questions and showed some really cool games, several of which make me jealous as a PS4 owner, at least for the next few hours.

I think this was Microsoft's best showing in four years. The screwed the pooch in 2013, they acted lame in 2014 with a focus on non-gaming, and they just spun their wheel until today. I liked what they shows from 1st parts to Indies., I think the Xbox One S is a good system to go forward with and a lot of what they want to do on XBL is fine. But Scorpio is such a huge mistake, such a huge blunder that only a company that doesn't understand consoles would do. They are putting XB One S out as a scarifce that they KNOW will sell poorly. Even if you don't watch e3 all the GameStop, Wal-mart, and Target clerks in teh stores will be telling folks NOT TO BUY XBone One S. Even if you have no clue what is happening in that space in 2017 some pimply kid will make sure you know. MS has sent Slim off to die.

Really the big issue is on the PC side, the Win 10 plans will suck for PC games. That is the side of the bridge that will fall first, and because ist is now welded onto the Xbox side they are going to topple their whole structure down around them. Scorpio will be an agonizing, screeching train wreck, as Windows 10 games suck on PC and the links between it and XBox games multiply the carnage.

I really hope over the next year that Microsoft sees ist is going to make a blunder. I hope they say a year from now that Scorpio is really going to come out in Nov 2018 or later

My primary is my PC and my console is an Xbox so the strong emphasis on cross platform 'buy once play on both' is a very enticing prospect. Overall it was a tight and upbeat press conference and I came away from it with an improved expectation for what will be coming out of Microsoft in the next couple of years.

Some things need clarifying. For instance what did Phil Spencer mean when he said 'optimal VR experience'. Is he implying that the current gen playstation with its sub-high end PC specs is going to struggle to provide highest fidelity or functionality? I think that we need to see what Playstation has to show on the VR front but for the meanwhile I think Microsoft are sensible to not even try to get on the VR bandwagon with this version of the Xbox one when the Scorpio version is going to be 4 times more powerful.

One last point about the 'S' being a mistake, I'd say that for us (i.e. most of the users of this site) then sure. Yes - most of us won't buy it. But for the legions of mums and dads that are looking to buy for their children who don't have earning power, or for themselves as casual gamers who don't want to have a high outlay then the 'S' is liable to quite well with these guys.

I give Microsoft that they are hitting nice marks to get things right. However, I can't return to them since the games I want they have lost to long ago. So for the Xbox fans here enjoy what they have.

This is pretty much it for me.

I can also iterate on your point about S or even Scorpio. Some people prefer a device be dedicated to gaming. PCs will never be gaming only. There will always be the distraction of other things a PC can do.

Imagine if you wanted a gaming platform for your kids. Something that allowed you to control what kind of content went through it right out of the box. Something that hooks up to a TV and just works.

What if you're an adult who wants a dedicated gaming platform and you only have enough room in your apartment for the laptop that you already do work with? (I think Dan even mentions this exact reason)

Consoles aren't just for hobbyists and it's important to remember there are a lot more use cases out there where consoles are a great solution.

Is there an archive of them talking over the stream? The ubisoft one is up but i can't find the microsoft one.

I'm really excited to see Microsoft bring so many games out on PC as well as xbox. The Windows Store right now is utter garbage and needs a massive overhaul to improve usability, but I'm optimistic about this at least.

@nick: Here it is, had to dig for it, no idea why it isn't on the main page in some way.

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/we-talk-over-the-microsoft-e3-2016-press-conferenc/2300-11283/

Scalebound looks pretty bad and that just breaks my Reveangance-loving heart, especially with the sly PC announcement.

@nightriff: thanks!

Strong press conference except for the FFXV and Scalebound sections.

lets face facts...... Gears of War hasn't presented well since Gears 2..... and that was 8 years ago.

I must confess, I do like the stage design because it reminded me older E3s, but yeah cutting away from gameplay is a mess. It broke my heart to see Scalebound be a poor man's Monster Hunter clone. I really do not feel comfortable about that We Happy Few especially at the front of the stage there was nothing fun or clever about it. Felt like watching a bad fan made intro to Fallout 3. That was crazy seeing John Carmack with an Occulis headset and playing Minecraft.

I do feel better about Microsoft's PC initiative then I did compared to Games for Windows Live back in 2007. Like when that started it was rough, slim pickings line up, poor connection to their online servers, and back then no one wanted to have these many apps one while we games. I mean yeah, it's not as smooth as we want it to bebut it does look like it's being handled better then 9 years ago.

Forza Horizon 3 looks really nice! As an Aussie, it was kind of nuts hearing them talk about areas I've actually been to the Yarra Valley and the Great Ocean Road. I'm more into arcadey fun racing games rather than simulations, of which there feels like there's a lot of.

We Happy Few looks neat, I wonder where it'd go storywise and what it would explore thematically. Same with that Inside game.

But man, Scalebound did NOT demo well and I personally felt it didn't demo that well back at Gamescom 2015. It comes off as very slow, cumbersome, doesn't animate well and the camera seems a bit clunky. They've done a pretty poor job of showing you what you ACTUALLY do; like is there an overworld, is this open-world or linear? Do you have upgrades? What's an early game mission like? Is there even a story? I just get no sense of the minute-to-minute gameplay in that game.

Felt a bit weird to announce the Xbox One S and then mention Project Scorpio - would the average consumer still want an S Model even when they know a new console is on the horizon? (I don't know even know what the "average" consumer would be anymore) I get that they probably needed to address this, and it's super interesting to see what this Scorpio thing ACTUALLY is but...I don't know. I'm still so unsure.

One thing that struck me was the connection to that whole social influencer sphere. Groups and Xbox Live; The Sea of Thieves trailer in particular. I can see a lot of younger people watching their favorite Youtubers play that and wanting to check it out. Maybe that's where the S model comes in, as like a more accessible entry point?

It's cool that Microsoft are bringing their games to PC. Now I absolutely don't need to buy an xbox. I already have a 360 knocking about with all the old games I'd want to play on that. I've always liked Gears so being able to continue with Gears 4 (though it kind of looked meh) is great for me.

So here's a curious thing. Not only are MS beefing up with Scorpio, but the Xbox One S also has a slightly-higher clocked CPU and GPU:

Gears of War 4 employs a dynamic resolution system that tweaks the game's rendering resolution in both single-player and multiplayer to maintain its target frame rate in each mode (30 frames per second and 60 fps, respectively). According to Fergusson, the Xbox One S has additional raw GPU and CPU power compared to the Xbox One, and The Coalition's engineers have been able to take advantage of that to reduce the frequency of frame rate or resolution penalties in more demanding sections of the game.

It's probably not a massive difference and I imagine the main reason they clocked their components a bit higher was to drive a 4K-native dashboard without eating into existing processing power, but if it also means marginally better performance for games then that's a good thing overall.

@conmulligan: That might just be because of the hardware they got. If I remember right by the time the slim PS2 came out, it had a faster cpu/gpu than the original but it didn't use it for anything. It merely had it because it was a cheaper/more available component at the time.

I thought Gears looked great. The weather seems like a cool addition. The saw blades that can ricochet seems like a solid Gears-ass weapon. New enemies might as well be locust with slight differences so far. That was the theme for the most part. Same with the characters not being Delta but speaking similarly with the catchphrases and the same kind of comradery. It's all Gears with a slight remix which is a plus in my book. I like Gears for what it is.

Sea of Thieves is still exciting but it's a bummer that only the sandbox seems ready. It a ways off, not even a ballpark date given for it.

Props to ReCore trailer for having a great song I hadn't hard before and not a sad cover. It was a good conference overall.

The one thing that's puzzled me is how Microsoft are going to encourage PC users to become Xbox Live Gold subscribers. The way I see it, they should either lower the price (improbable) or pump more value into the service. If they were to get Xbox 360 game emulation working on the PC, perhaps that could be a feature they could lock behind Gold and get some people on board?

@isomeri: Multiplayer is just going to be free on W10, KI is out and already works that way. It's a little unfair to the console people. I wish there was pushback and they made MS game multiplayer free. It's not like the 1st party games are the main reason people buy XBL Gold anyway. The top multiplayer games are consistently CoD , BF and FIFA but they'd still lose some money.

EDIT:

I misread but yeah, I don't know that W10 is going to have XBL Gold at all. It wouldn't be successful without the mulitplayer paywall anyways.

@ez123: The way that the platforms are unifying, I can't really see a future where console and PC users would have different levels of service. "Free multiplayer for all" would be a pretty great zinger at their E3 2017 show, but might be too financially costly in the long run. On the other hand, by beefing up the Gold offering Microsoft could fill an interesting "Spotify/Netflix for games" niche on the PC which is only really served by that EA thing right now. Instant access to a "the Vault" type of selection of games in addition to monthly new games and game demos could be worth 10 bucks a month to a lot of PC gamers.

Time will tell but I can totally see it.

The only chance for anything to happen is console fan backlash.

I was expecting them to turn around and say they're dropping the need for XBL Gold for multiplayer on console - that if you wanted to keep it you'd still get new games on the service every month, more storage space for save files and additional discounts on sales. I think that would've been a big push for them, effectively swapping places with what Sony did when they made PS+ necessary to play online for non-f2p games.