11th June 2017, 3:09 PM
Beyond the high price though, MS's conference was pretty good as far as it went. They showed a lot of games (42, they kept saying), and that's good. However, almost all of them are multiplatform third-party titles which might have timed exclusivity windows, and very few are exclusives.
Seriously, as far as a MS platofrm-exclusive library goes that they showed, that is, Xbox/PC only games, here's all I can think of that they showed: Crackdown 3, Forza Motorsport 7, Sea of Thieves, Ori 2, State of Decay 2... and uh, that's about it? Unless Cuphead is exclusive, not sure about that. There may be some other indie things, but MS had NO major new game announcements here, unless you count Ori 2 and Forza 7, but while Ori 2 looks amazing I can't say that a sequel is a big surprise with how successful the first one was, and Forza 7 has been heavily hinted at so it'd have been more surprising if the didn't show it. I know MS doesn't have many first-party studios left now, but we're really seeing how much that is hurting; you need games on your system to make people want to buy it!
Making that worse, almost everything they showed was Western-developed, so MS has done nothing here to change the X1/PS4 narrative that Japanese games almost never appear on X1, but PC and PS4 only. Maybe there's nothing they can do about that now, but it is unfortunate and makes me less interested in the system. It's sad how MS collapsed completely in Japan after the '00s; they never were successful there, but it was nice how the 360 got a lot of major Japanese titles. I don't have a PS4 or X1 of course, and naturally if I was to get one I'd far rather get the MS system than the Sony one (and the far more powerful hardware MS has announced here looks great too!), but it has nothing I can't get on PC...
Of course though really when I get another system (this holiday, next year, or whatever) it's sure to be a Switch and not either of those systems and the Switch has even less third-party support since at least MS has all of the Western studios onboard, but still.
Seriously, as far as a MS platofrm-exclusive library goes that they showed, that is, Xbox/PC only games, here's all I can think of that they showed: Crackdown 3, Forza Motorsport 7, Sea of Thieves, Ori 2, State of Decay 2... and uh, that's about it? Unless Cuphead is exclusive, not sure about that. There may be some other indie things, but MS had NO major new game announcements here, unless you count Ori 2 and Forza 7, but while Ori 2 looks amazing I can't say that a sequel is a big surprise with how successful the first one was, and Forza 7 has been heavily hinted at so it'd have been more surprising if the didn't show it. I know MS doesn't have many first-party studios left now, but we're really seeing how much that is hurting; you need games on your system to make people want to buy it!
Making that worse, almost everything they showed was Western-developed, so MS has done nothing here to change the X1/PS4 narrative that Japanese games almost never appear on X1, but PC and PS4 only. Maybe there's nothing they can do about that now, but it is unfortunate and makes me less interested in the system. It's sad how MS collapsed completely in Japan after the '00s; they never were successful there, but it was nice how the 360 got a lot of major Japanese titles. I don't have a PS4 or X1 of course, and naturally if I was to get one I'd far rather get the MS system than the Sony one (and the far more powerful hardware MS has announced here looks great too!), but it has nothing I can't get on PC...
Of course though really when I get another system (this holiday, next year, or whatever) it's sure to be a Switch and not either of those systems and the Switch has even less third-party support since at least MS has all of the Western studios onboard, but still.