A recap of what went down in the Microsoft camp…
Microsoft launched their E3 2016 briefing by unveiling the Xbox One S. Essentially a slimmer Xbox One that is 40% smaller, has it’s own internal power brick and has 2TB of storage and can also run 4K video. It’s due out in August 2016 for $299. Not quite the upgrade most have heard of, but we’ll get to that at the end…
Gears 4 was shown next with a brief demo and looks like your classic Gears experience, it is confirmed to be free for the alternate platform you buy for, so if you buy the Xbox One version…then you can play it on Windows 10 for free and vice versa. It also supports cross-play co-op through the campaign, as well as Horde 3.0.
Gears fans rejoiced as General RAAM was announced as the next playable fighter in Killer Instinct.
We then got a nice demo of Forza Horizon 3 which looks stunning and incredibly easy to connect to each others games. Next up was an updated look at Recore, albeit brief…it did look impressive.
Square-Enix next showed us a boss battle of Final Fantasy XV that looked the part, even if it did look impossible to overcome such a gigantic foe.
The Division will be getting it’s first expansion first on Xbox One.
DICE showed off Battlefield 1 after it’s presentation yesterday, still looks jaw-dropping and potential FPS King of 2016.
We were then given a Minecraft update, which will probably be happening every year now that Microsoft owns the IP.
Next was a bunch of indie games, but the most impressive was We Happy Few which felt like a cross between BioShock and A Clockwork Orange, an incredibly powerful demo and it was announced to be one of the Preview Games for Xbox One.
CD ProjektRed confirmed that the card game Gwent from The Witcher 3 will be it’s standalone game.
Tekken 7 was announced and given a release date of Early 2017.
Dead Rising 4 was shown off briefly, but has a release date of Holiday 2016.
Platinum Games showed off a quick boss battle of Scalebound, which was impressive.
Rare showed off the highlights of gamers playing Sea of Thieves with humorous results as they were given no tutorial.
State of Decay 2 was confirmed.
Halo Wars 2 confirmed for Feb 21st 2017, but Open Beta available for a week. Starting Now.
Finally, Phil Spencer confirmed the much rumored Xbox Scorpio. 4K gaming resolution, 6 teraflops of horsepower and so much more. Release window is 2017.
So what do you think? Did Microsoft impress you or are you holding out to see what Ubisoft/Sony/Nintendo have up their sleeves? We’ll be going through their press briefings later too.