Microsoft had their press conference yesterday, and now that I’ve had a day to digest and think about what I saw, hear comments on what other people thought, I’d like to throw in my own thoughts.
As primarily an Xbox gamer, I feel like I am the target demographic for Microsoft, and with that in mind I can say that while overall I didn’t feel like the conference was bad, there were a few moments that left me scratching my head.
The official name of the Scorpio is the Xbox One X. I do not understand this one bit. Not only does it sound a helluva lot like Xbox One S, I don’t think I’m alone when I say I had grown a bit fond of the Scorpio name over the last year. What would’ve been so wrong about Xbox Scorpio?
It will cost $499. Not gonna lie, that’s a tough pill to swallow. I paid the same price for my XBO, and that took me the better part of the year to pay off. I think MS could’ve been the heroes of the year if they would’ve announced a $399 price tag and dropped the mic. I understand that they’re probably still selling it at a loss though.
Original Xbox Backward Compatibility was announced, and I couldn’t be happier. I have a binder full of Xbox classics sitting on my shelf, and I had been contemplating buying an upscaler and new (third party) Xbox controller to play some of them, but hopefully the library they release will cover most of what I have, and I won’t have to worry about it. Plus with Game DVR it eliminates one more cord stretching from my console to my PC.
Crackdown 3 was shown… kinda. I have to admit, with an November release date I would’ve expected a bigger showing from Crackdown. This was a headliner a few years ago, with destruction and maybem out the wazoo, touting “the power of the cloud.” Yet the small snippets of video they showed didn’t demonstrate any destruction at all. It was all very odd.
To Microsoft, “exclusivity” means Xbox and Windows. PC gamers should probably understand by now that Microsoft is ok with you playing the game on your PC. You are not who they’re trying to sell the system to.
Overall I think Microsoft’s conference was every bit as good as it possibly could’ve been. With the exception of the price tag on the Xbox One X, and that terrible name, they delivered on what they said they would. Phil Spencer has stated in the past that their current customers were important to them, and the inclusion of the OG Xbox backward compatibility is proof. The games they showcased looked amazing, Sea of Thieves still looks super fun, and the XBO-X looks slick and compact. The lack of true “AAA” exclusives is what everyone is stuck on, and while it is true, MS didn’t have a Horizon-sized show stopper, they are also in the “off year” where they’ve already released their exclusives. Gears of War, Halo, Halo Wars 2, ReCore, and Dead Rising 4 all released recently. Granted that’s not a lot of games, but it’s all of what they had working on. I would be willing to bet that outside of some indie games, Sony’s conference won’t have much outside of what we already know about as well.
All those people who complain about the lack of new IP, but didn’t buy Sunset Overdrive or ReCore have no one but themselves to blame.
