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| The future of Xbox. |
Microsoft kicked off day zero of E3 with their press conference as they always do. However, this year their press conference was arguably more important than it has been in recent memory. A few weeks ago they showed off their new console the Xbox One on live television to a somewhat muted response. They focused mainly on media features, which left a lot of Xbox fans feeling dejected. In addition to announcing that the Xbox One would not support used games and be subject to strict online connectivity
To cause further problems Microsoft released a statement detailing their policies for used games, online connectivity, and the Kinect. You can find those policies here. For those of you who don't know (Although that seems impossible at this point) games are linked to your Xbox live account. So you can only sell back used games to select retailers. This kind of DRM has been being pushed for by major publishers for a long time, but that doesn't mean that it's been well received by consumers. It doesn't exactly help that their clarified policies still aren't super clear.
Despite all of that Microsoft still brought their best to E3. While they promised that E3 would be all about showing the games they had to make some important announcements as well.
- Microsoft Points will be no more. It's only real money going forward!
- A partnership with twitch for online recording and streaming of games
- Another Xbox 360 redesign
- The Xbox One will launch for $499 in November
Microsoft promised a press conference full of games and they certainly delivered. I think it's safe to say that most of them aren't for me though. I missed a few of them when it was live, but I've since gone back to check out what I missed. Since I'm not a huge fan of shooters I'll just briefly talk about what I;m excited for from the Microsoft offerings.
Killer Instinct
Rare made some awesome games for Microsoft, but recently they've been relegated to working on the stupid avatars. Even now they're still not making a game I care about, but they are advising Double Helix Games as they reboot the oh so classic Rare franchise Killer Instinct. I say that sarcastically, because I don't think that Killer Instinct is beloved by anyone.
It always seemed like a Mortal Kombat ripoff, but I always had fun playing it. KI was very much a product of the 90's and I'm glad to see that it still is. So far only Jago and Sabrewulf have been shown, but they kept their outdated character designs. A gruff voiced announcer still yells when you complete combos and there is a weird amount of blood. It looks exactly like Killer Instinct and that makes me excited. I don't nessecarily know if anyone else will get excited for a very 90's-centric fighting game, but it's cool to see that Double Helix is trying it out.
Metal Gear Solid V
I'll be the first person to tell you that I don't think MGS5 should exist. In fact I'm not even excited for it. After the new trailer Konami produced for it I am at least interested in it though. The things I learned from the trailer were that it's an open world game, game time moves along with real time (At least I think?), the world seems large and empty, you have a crew, and you can go stealth on a horse.
Kojima has been going around saying that the themes in this game might offend or scare people and I'm kind of worried about that. In this trailer there were a few scenes with children that seemed kind of off. In one of them it seemed like Snake even shot them, but it was a cutaway. I don't really know. MGS5 looks insane just as every other MGS game. I just don't know if I want to experience that anymore.
D4
Swery, the man behind the terribly brilliant Deadly Premonition has been allowed to make another game. D4 is going to be an episodic release much like Telltale's The Walking Dead. It's a murder mystery in which you play as a man with time travel powers. He's trying to solve the murder of his wife, but I assume that since he has time travel powers he'll try to stop it as well. Swery is weird, so this game will probably be weird as well. It;s the good kind of weird though and I look forward to it.
Xbox One?
Microsoft showed a whole lot more, but it didn't really resonate with me. Titanfall the first game from Respawn Entertainment looks like a fusion of Halo and Call Of Duty with mechs. It's going to be an Xbox One Exclusive. Obviously there will be a new Halo game coming to the platform as well. A new Dead Rising will also be available if that's more your cup of tea. From what they showed it seems like a lot of the zany humor has been removed though, but we don't know that for sure yet.
People seem to be thinking that Microsoft is going to bomb in this new generation because of their DRM and their online connectivity. I don't necessarily agree with that. The Xbox One is still going to have a lot of top notch first party titles and a wealth of third party titles. The used game issue may cause a lot of problems at first, but it might not be quite as bad once the system gets off the ground. We're moving towards a digital only future already, so maybe Microsoft is just taking the first step
-Manny
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