E3 2017: We Talk Over the Microsoft Press Conference

So early that there's only 1 video option

@benpack Shameful display of DBZ knowledge saying that Super Saiyan 3 was Super Saiyan 4 (@vinny was right; #justiceforvinny) and saying that Super Saiyan 2 Gohan was Trunks. Time to turn in your pink BadMan shirt.

Finally had my "that ball is round!" moment for, strangely enough, Forza. The curves on cars finally look smooth, and no jagged edges. Not really a racing guy, but might have to look at it (especially since Crackdown looks so bland, so not 4k, and no mention of destruction...)

Should have had the car be the thumbnail.

Bummed about Anthem.

Xbox One X (Xbo.X) seems deliberately chosen to stop people from calling it the X-bone.

I think Microsoft should get a slow golf clap for finding ways to say "Exclusive" where it NEVER meant they would be the only console to get the game. They obfuscated well, but all you get is a night of claps and not much to show the next day.

"Over fifty percent of Xbox One users have used backwards compatibility..." Well, they did once...for five minutes...and then never used it again.

This may have been the weakest and saddest Microsoft conference i have seen is a decade. At least when they were launching Xbox One they THOUGHT they were winning. What just occurred on that stage was like watching a hooker try to overdose....it should have had "Ed Sheeran - The A Team" playing over it.

#VapE3

Anthem looks amazing visually, like really good. Unfortunately, an online focused coop loot shooter seems about the last thing I'd want to play from BioWare. Oh well, I guess Dragon Age 4 might come out one day...

I feel like Ben watches enough anime that that had got to be a huge trolling manouver.

Good conference, overall! I liked the look of some games here, and I'm happy about Black Desert coming to console, the changes they made to Assassin's Creed's combat. Crackdown 3 looks like Saints Row 4, not a bad thing. The cyberpunk game was pretty.

They might as well have called this a PC conference!

42 games and how many can you only play on Xbox? Like 6? For $500??

Who is buying this?!

Xbox One X? You've got to be shitting me.

Except for Porche and Shoutcast guy parts, I'll give credit to Microsoft for running a pretty tight show that flowed well from game to game without wasting time on a lot of BS (take note EA.) Unfortunately, a lot of those games didn't look very interesting and the Scorpio price is just too expensive, so overall as an Xbox fan it was kind of a disappointment.

You don't want to play Destiny as Iron Man? Because I kinda do...

Giant Bomb at E3 is totally the only reason I give a shit about E3. Thanks guys.

yes mr scorpion

@nicksmi56: people who don't have or don't want to build a pc?

hoenstly the things that looked the most interesting to me were the games in the montage, everything else was pretty average

4K is overrated and 1080p is fine. Don't @ me

Quite disappointed with the conference. I thought the Last Night looked amazing, as well as Ori but that's about it.

Forza looked cool but it's another Forza game so it's hard to get too excited. There was not enough new stuff! I'm glad Cuphead and Tacoma have release dates though.

@passivespiral: Nah. Like, don't get me wrong, I think it looks potentially super cool for what it is, but I just don't really like playing games with other people. Big budget, story-driven singleplayer RPGs are a rare and precious thing - the thing that got me into video games, in fact - and, whatever Anthem is, it isn't that.

BioWare can make whatever kinds of games they want, of course, and I'm glad so many people seem stoked about what Anthem seems to offer, but it genuinely couldn't be more disappointing for me.

That was my Porsche onstage. I let them borrow it.

So grab a PS4 and get most of the games they showed in this conference there plus PS exclusives. Or if you don't have a PC and don't mind getting one, get one and save tons of money in the long run. There's just about no reason to buy this besides brand loyalty and backwards compatibility, and even then you can get all of those cheaper with just a normal One or a One S if you absolutely HAVE to own one. This is flushing money down the drain.

Ugh, I came into this conference excited for Microsoft to put themselves back on the map, but instead they ran away and hid in the corner. So frustrating.

Xbox One X is such a bad name when you already have Xbox One S.

Looks like a solid console though - hopefully the power bump brings more games to the platform (PS4 still has a much stronger lineup). OG backwards compatibility is great as well.

Have to say though, it looks a LOT like a PlayStation 2:

Pretty cool conference in terms of games, one of Microsoft's best. They aren't really saying anything to make me interested in Xbox One (S or X) though. Pretty much everything interesting is going to be on PC too.

no PC is going to be able to play games the way Xbox One X will at that price. i'm happy to have a beefy pc and to have the power and flexibility it offers, but seriously you're not going to have this power and ease of use at this price with a PC. i have no problem offering a mid level enthusiast option like this for gamers. more options are a better thing, right?

that i think about it pc isn't necessarily cost effective. no one is trying to optimize for pc performance so even with the technically more robust hardware you aren't even getting that big of a benefit. i wish it were different, but that's how it is.

Is it too late to cancel Crackdown? It's been in development for some time and the best they could come up with was an unconvincing action montage. The graphics seem to be at least a generation behind other games from the conference.

On a positive note, The Last Night looked absolutely amazing. The combination of setting and art style hit me right in the sweet spot, and I'm not even a huge Bladerunner fan.

@kirkyx: That's fair. I have my hopes set on Cyberpunk 2077 for my RPG desires at the moment.

I think the left half of the table had it right. They made a good pitch for XB1 in general with expanded backwards compatibility and an alright mix of exclusive games, but not a good one for Scorpio. After how the Pro has gone so far, vague promises about better performance and needing a new expensive TV to really take advantage of it mean there's no way I'm getting one. Especially at that price.

Also my secret favorite thing was everyone wincing at Dan trying to argue that a 4K TV is cheap enough to impulse buy one even if you're perfectly happy with your current TV.

my hope is that Anthem is more like Diablo or Borderlands and less like Destiny. Give me a great world to explore, tons of quests and such to do with my friends. Please don’t be like Destiny where we’re given 6 dungeons and 1 overly complicated raid to do over and over and over.

@passivespiral: Oh yeah, I'm really excited about Cyberpunk too, but... Well, that's just one game. Big budget RPGs of the sort CDPR and BioWare make (used to make? I guess Dragon Age 4'll still be a thing at some point) are difficult to find, 'specially since Obsidian decided - quite understandably - to stop working with major publishers.

Options are fine, but this is a business. You're supposed to be trying to get people to buy this thing, not giving options out just because.

It's absolutely baffling to me that they would throw the word 'exclusive' around like free candy to try and trick people, only to undermine it every single time with the little blurb on the left letting you know that that was just a huge load. How are you supposed to sell a product when you make sure everything that would make that product worth buying is on another product with more to offer?

And then you make it more expensive than all of its competition.

Who on the Xbox team thought this was a good idea? The incompetency on display here is off the charts.

I still think consoles are overselling their 4k abilities, if the Xbox One X can truly deliver native 4k without checkerboarding or upscaling trickery I'd be impressed though.

so are they talking over the Bethesda conference in a bit?

@zaldar: i do believe they are

Jethro Tull.

@kirkyx: Hopefully Dragon Age 4 will be good, I liked the core of Inquisition, but it got really tedious. I actually didn't think ME:A was terrible either, just kind of unnecessary and poorly optimized. I'll definitely be taking a wait and see approach with Anthem, but I am curious.

'The Last Night' looked freaking great.

Sea of Thieves looks like it could be light on mechanics. The gunplay and swordfighting seemed very barebones. It can still be good if it has a lot of diverse content. Not just go to place, pick up treasure chest.

Crackdown 3 seems very...bleh. Personally not surprised. The first Crackdown was a pleasant surprise, a good but not great game. The second Crackdown sucked. With a history like that, the franchise hasn't earned the hype.

State of Decay 2 looks good. But, from everything I'm reading on the internet, people largely overlooked its presence in the press conference. Don't know why. I'm excited for it.

Forza looks like Forza. Competent, beautiful, reliable.

So 2.5/4 on the triple A exclusives, not bad, but also 4 games is a short list.

Anthem has one thing that I always wanted from Destiny. A seamless WoW style open world. Also Jetpacks>Sparrows. Remains to be seen if Bioware can improve on the weak gunplay of Mass Effect.

@joby: but....can we still call people "x-boner"?

I really hope the next Metro is good. Last Light instantly lost me with how linear it was compared to the original. 2033 was so special. I hope this is a return to form.

I'm so fucking disappointed in Anthem. The last thing I want from Bioware is a multiplayer game, and the last thing I want from ANY studio is another multiplayer loot shooter.

No download yet?

@nicksmi56: It's exclusive to Microsoft, meaning Windows 10 and Xbox, I'm not sure why that bothers you. I personally have no problem with people being able to play Forza on their PC while I play it on my Xbox S. And Microsoft is totally happy selling it to you on Windows 10 or Xbox, both those platforms are important to them. If anything, PC is actually overall way more important to them, business wise.

The Last Night looks neat, glad Cuphead has a release date.

Xbox sort of went over my expectations in the games department. They had really good variety and some of the stuff they showed was really beautiful. That said, I would sooner invest in a good PC and have those advantages than get a scorpin.

@passivespiral: Yeah, I actually genuinely liked Inquisition--I thought it suffered from filler-itis in a big way, but I really enjoyed the supporting cast, most of the main quests, and I think it had BioWare's best ever villain. (Not Corypheus; the Trespasser DLC... Re-contextualises some things in a major way.)

In spite of my Ryder avatar, I'm not actually all that far into ME: A just yet - got really bogged down in work just after it came out, and I haven't gotten back to it yet - so I can't really speak to it.

Here are some reasons that immediately come to my head:

- I want to play new games natively in 4K on my 4K TV and I don't have a gaming PC

- I don't have a current gen console yet, and I have a 4K TV. All of my friends play on Xbox.

- I don't have a current gen console yet,, and I have a 4K TV. The Xbox / Win10 exclusives excite me more than the Sony ones. I want to play these games at their full potential

It is a bit absurd - especially after this conference - to say that there is NO reason to buy one.

Decent conference and some interesting games but Microsoft blundered on the price for the Scorpio/X. Even though its more powerful than the Pro, needed to be at least Pro level price to be really inciting as a purchase especially if they want to target people unsure on wanting a Pro or Xbox One in general.