Xbox is definitely taking things in a different direction.
After the cancellation of E3 and all of the Coronavirus stuff, Xbox finally got around to doing its big summer event this afternoon. Several years back, it was revealed that Xbox had brought in a bunch of studios to create exclusive games for Xbox and Windows. Since that announcement, we’ve heard very little about what these studios have been up to and with the Series X due for launch later this year, I think it was fair for many people to be expecting something big today and I wouldn’t exactly say we got that. Phil Spencer announced at the start of the show that they would be revealing games from 9 of the 15 studios under Xbox Game Studios and to be honest, it just wasn’t that impressive.
Unsurprisingly, the show opened with a big look at Halo Infinite. I’m not a big Halo guy, so this was a bigger deal for other people than it was for me, but the interesting thing here is that it looks like Halo is going to be moving in the direction of a live service. This idea of games as a platform is one that seems to be taking hold within the industry and I don’t think that’s inherently bad. If you have a major game like a Halo or Call of Duty, the idea of a singular, constantly evolving game makes much more sense than releasing a new version every year or two. The obvious concern here is that the game is overrun with microtransactions and poor design, much like Anthem, but I’ll be curious to see how these more established franchises handle this approach.
As for the other games that caught my attention:
– Ori and the Will of the Wisps is receiving an upgraded version for the Series X, optimized for 4k and 120 fps. I loved the game and would highly recommend playing it, but this wasn’t exactly a whopper of an announcement.
– Last year, Obsidian Entertainment released a decent little game in The Outer Worlds and today, it was revealed that the game will be receiving two expansions. The first being Peril on Gorgon, releasing on September 9th. I liked The Outer Worlds, but I’m not sure that I loved it enough to get any of its DLC, so we’ll see how it’s received when the time comes.
– It was also revealed that Obsidian’s next game, Avowed, is a fantasy first person game similar to Elder Scrolls. Obsidian didn’t exactly expand their horizons too much, moving from a Fallout style game to an Elder Scrolls style game, but I think Obsidian does a better job at Bethesda’s games than Bethesda does, so I’m looking forward to seeing more.
– Image & Form’s next title is a neat little game called The Gunk. This looks to be an interesting puzzle game of sorts on an alien planet. If you show me a game with a great art style and nice aesthetics, I’m in.
– And to wrap things up, the heavily anticipated fourth Fable game was finally announced. We’ve been waiting a long time for this one and we finally got it. The old Fable games were really basic and it overstayed its welcome by the time Fable 3 released, so this one needs to be more than that. I’m really excited to see what Playground Games has in store for this series.
– You can see the rest of Xbox’s announcements over on the r/Games subreddit.
Overall, I thought the show was just ok. Outside of Fable, there really weren’t any heavy hitters. With Ghost of Tsushima’s release last week, it just reinforced how much stronger Playstation’s line up of exclusive titles is than Xbox’s. It looks like the Series X is going to have superior hardware in the next generation of consoles and Xbox’s Game Pass is an excellent service for players, but Xbox’s first party library just isn’t there. While Playstation emphasizes its first party titles, it feels like Xbox is more focused on providing a high quality gaming service with its console. Which is great, but I feel like Xbox should be able to do both.
Projekt Six 
You must be logged in to post a comment.