So, how was the Xbox briefing for you? I spent mine switching, as is customary with such things these days, between WhatsApp and Twitter — but in a new twist, focused most of my attention on the newly born Hit Points Discord. There was a lovely vibe in there, once a few teething troubles had been dealt with. My thanks to everyone who joined in.
Anyway! It was a good show, I thought, particularly in the context of the rather drab few days we’d had leading up to it, and in contrast to Summer Game Fest I have no real fashion notes to pass on. Evidently someone at Microsoft thought, right, important marketing event being watched by millions around the world, should probably get a stylist in. Sure, it was all a little safe — everyone looked like they’d got their outfits from the in-game shop in Forza Horizon 5, with Todd Howard having clearly whaled in the premium store for his leather jacket — but it was obvious some thought had actually gone into this stuff during the planning stages so, yep, fair play.
Indeed, the show as a whole was smartly conceived. Microsoft clearly recognised that, after focusing a little too heavily in recent times on announcements and CG trailers for years-off games, it was high time it stopped telling and started showing. As a framework for an E3 broadcast, ‘games you can play in the next 12 months’ is a terrific hook. Adding ‘on Game Pass’, however, meant a narrowing of focus, a slight fall in quality, and a sheer drop in hype levels. There was lots to look at, sure, and plenty of things I will play in the months to come. But there wasn’t an awful lot that was truly lather-worthy. (Personally speaking, I was most excited about Diablo IV, at least until ‘2023’ popped up on screen. We really are looking at a terribly quiet Q4 once again, eh.) And if I were a game developer, I’d be a little concerned about the message Microsoft sent last night: if you want us to promote your Xbox game, you’ll need to put it on our subscription service. That’s been the implication for a while, sure, but there’s an awful lot of game industry beyond the boundaries of Game Pass. I hope this narrowness of focus was a one-off, rather than the start of a trend.
The main attraction was, of course, Starfield, and while I’ve seen it get a bit of a kicking around the internet I thought it looked great, at least until the caveats kicked in. One person’s commendably ambitious is another’s ominously overscoped, and we know how that usually shakes out when Bethesda is involved. I found the ‘1,000 planets’ bit Howard dropped at the close to be more foreboding than exciting. It is clearly an enormous game with a lot of moving parts, which leads me to one inevitable conclusion: if we’re really playing Starfield within the next 12 months I will eat my hat. It’s impossible not to look at all that and not see at least one more delay over the (event) horizon.
The fact that Phil Spencer had already drawn a line under the ‘next 12 months’ thing by the time Starfield was shown suggests that Xbox is hedging its bets a bit too. Sure, I imagine that was done in order to set up the Kojima announcement, and Starfield was always going to be the game that closed out the show. But given the stories that emerged last week about the troubled development of Fallout 76, and the occasional whisper I hear about the state of things at Bethesda these days… well, you know. I’m not blocking out my calendar for Q1 just yet, put it that way.
As for Kojima, what should have been the headline news of the evening lost a good deal of its power through the obvious implication that the game is likely many, many years away — and, of course, the fact that rumours of a cloud-powered Kojima game for Xbox have been swirling around for a year or more. (An aside: is anyone keeping a running total of how many big announcements have had the air sucked out of them by a small but very loud band of in-the-know leakers? Whatever you think about the games media’s lock-step relationship with game-industry marketing schedules, I expect you will agree that it is far better to learn these things amid much fanfare on a large stage of some kind than from some shithouse with a podcast.) While I’m far from Kojima’s biggest fan, and I remain highly sceptical of the potential for cloud technology in game design, I am nonetheless intrigued to see what comes from this relationship. Kojima is just mad enough to make it work, and Microsoft, knowing what a catch the Metal Gear man is, will naturally fund him to infinity.
Overall, despite the volume, quality and variety of what Microsoft showed last night, my overriding response was one of frustration, though none of that is Phil Spencer’s fault. One of the main reasons for my continued championing of E3 is the holistic view of the industry it gives me. On several occasions over the years I have walked out of an Xbox briefing on a Sunday morning thinking Microsoft had knocked it out of the park, only for Sony to blow it out of the water a few hours later. Then, the next morning, Nintendo would put both of them in the shade.
Eventually, once I’d got my head around the jumble of metaphors (E3 is about the game industry playing baseball… in water… under an awning of some kind? Weird) I would be able to form a picture of the shape of things; not in a bland ‘who won E3’ sort of way, but in what the conferences had told me about the various priorities, peculiarities and problem areas of the three platform holders, and the broader direction of travel of the console market as a whole. Obviously there was none of that last night; there’s been none of it throughout the not-E3 era, really, and my personal worry is that we’re never getting it back, whether real-E3 returns next year or not. No doubt the big players have come to prefer operating in a vacuum than fighting each other for eyeballs and airtime. I suppose I can sympathise with that, but it just means everyone trundles along in third gear with no fear of getting overtaken, because they know they’ve got the road to themselves. It’s all getting a bit boring, if I’m honest.
MAILBAG!
Not a sausage. Hit a comment or leave reply (this was a mistake but I like it and am keeping it) and let’s pick this up on Wednesday.
MORE!
I didn’t watch much not-E3 this weekend, Xbox aside; if you saw anything that struck a chord with you, do drop it in the comments or something. I will merely shout out Immortality, the new game from Her Story and Telling Lies developer (and Hit Points chum) Sam Barlow, which now has a release date. It’s coming next month, and will be on Game Pass at launch. Celebrate!
Kojima Productions has moved to reassure fans that it still has “a very good partnership with PlayStation”, presumably in response to a load of big babies getting upset about the studio’s cloud-flavoured deal with Microsoft.
Bobby Kotick has said Activision Blizzard will “engage in good-faith negotiations” with the newly formed QA union at Raven Software — while simultaneously, one assumes, pressing the button to release the flying monkeys.
Shares in Devolver Digital have fallen by, as of this writing, almost 50% after the publisher lowered its earnings forecasts. It now expects revenue for the year ending December 31 to be between $27m and $32m — down from the originally projected $130m-$140m. Yikes.
Raekwon and Ghostface in the new Turtles game? Okay, I’m in.
There we go. I had a very tiring, very busy, and ultimately very fulfilling weekend, but I now need a lie down. Have a good couple of days, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.
When I was a child, I saw the E3 through Club Nintendo (in Spanish), a Mexican based Nintendo Power magazine branch of sorts, and GamePro (in English of course); and plenty of dead magazines that came from Spain and just regurgitated what was said while being translated (horribly) from English and Japanese, to English to Spanish (In the case of the Tokyo game Show)
And back then I always wondered how would it be to attend an actual E3. And then I became an actual software developer. And then the E3 met YouTube and lo and behold, you don't need a visa, you could watch everything. Of course I reckon nothing would beat the actual being there and meet likeminded folks.
Actually I don't where I was going with this. I promise I had a point but it went up in smoke during the reminiscence
of all that was shown during this past few days, the XBOX presentation was the one that struck a chord with me
I think about all the amazing things they are doing as developers (I am a big Forza Fan, Forza Motorsport had me in giggles)
And then, the big reveal: Starfield.
it is a collect-all-genres-ton, it has flying, driving, shooting, doing stardew valley and Subnautica research tasks. It has everything. if it is half as good as Skyrim we will be playing this for years to come.
But I was thinking about the human cost of this.
How much people worked during so many years to have this apparently complete feature presentation of a game that has at least another 12 months of work. How many lives were changed by the long hours, how many started at Bethesda then, quit, probably joined again, and quit once more. how many are affected by the MS Acquisition and their promise not to crunch anymore?
I do agree, Starfield might have a beautiful delay or perhaps they will just keep some things off (like flying ships) out of the first iteration to deliver.
And then I can only think of The Last of Us 2 and that tale about people renting small one bedroom flats so they don't have to drive all the way home every night.
The cyberpunk Fiasco
Since then, I can only think in these big games in humanity lost for the developers working on them. (like in Vampire the Masquerade)
I see my reflection in those persons and my wish to become a writer and abandon software development as a whole even tho I love it.
How expensive was that trailer in humanity and lives? Hopefully, one day we will know. I do pray it was barely enough to move the needle.
Few thoughts: Josh Sawyers Pentiment looks interesting. Redfalls marketing team want no one over the age of thirty to be interested in their game. Todd Howards jacket looks to be the same one he wore when he announced the miserable Fallout 76 some four years ago. (Is this some kind of weird dog whistle to the guys at Kotaku after their Bethesda exposé during the week?)
Despite the wardrobe choice Starfield looked pretty darned impressive. I regularly visit Reddit just to see the latest leaked still of a door from Starfield's development so I was primed to be impressed and it didn't disappoint. Still some concerns. Like your noted 1000 planets Nathan. Can one create a handcrafted experience on 1000 planets? Also combat was a little underwhelming and weirdly they didn't touch on how dialogue works (I'm really hoping for an unvoiced protagonist) Other than that, a lot to be excited for! and the killer app for me to finally pick up an Xbox.