I’ve said it before and will say it again here: Giant Bomb knocks out some of the smartest, funniest, and well edited coverage of E3 around. If you’re interested in the expo and have a half hour to spare (especially if you haven’t been heavily following news coverage like I have) it’s a wonderful recap on what’s happened so far. I’d expect a few more recap videos to hit the site later as well.
The “day zero” E3 press conferences by the big two console manufacturers feel like a relic of the pre-digital era: largely predictable, bloated, expensive, and with a lot more emphasis on style and spectacle over details. Yet they’re still important to set the tone and general focus of the Xbox One and PS4 platforms over the next year. In that regard, both Microsoft and Sony had solid, if unspectacular, B grade efforts. Microsoft played it safe but remained extremely polished and focused in the process. Sony had some more interesting, diverse announcements but were marred by some poor pacing and presentation.
Judged strictly by presentation alone, Microsoft handily trumped Sony this year. To answer criticism from last year, they stayed laser focused on games. Though their briefing lasted over 90 minutes, it rarely dragged, with well-crafted transitions and trailers between the larger titles. Xbox head Phil Spencer was clearly on a mission to woo core gamers back to Xbox, and it did so by playing to traditional Xbox boilerplate: racing games, first person shooters, and fantasy medieval combat.
Yet even with a solid effort, Xbox’s exclusives felt underwhelming and almost completely unsurprising. Forza Horizon 2, Crackdown, Fable Legends and The Master Chief Collection are sequels or reboots on existing IP. They’ll likely be fun, but it felt like safe genre territory Microsoft has heavily covered in the past. Also, as more third party publishers go multi-platform, we’ll see Microsoft’s genre reboots overlapping with other publishers (e.g. Ubisoft’s The Crew in the same space as Forza Horizon 2, Bungee’s Destiny competing with Halo 5). Die hard Xbox 360 fans now have stronger reasons to make the jump to the Xbox One now versus last year. But without a clear exclusives victory on sheer numbers or originality, I don’t expect Microsoft to sway those on the fence between the Xbox One and PS4.
In contrast to Microsoft’s showing, Sony, at least on paper, presented a more interesting set of games. Their exclusives were fewer but packed serious punch: Grim Fandango is a classic, cult adventure game from famed designer Tim Schafer and was potentially the biggest surprise of the day. No Man’s Sky is a very unique, indie sci-fi darling and potentially more ambitious than any game shown at E3. Then there’s Bloodborne, a gory RPG from the creators of Demon’s Souls. Round that out with a few anticipated indie exclusives for 2014, most notably Hotline Miami 2, and Sony showed off an exclusive (albeit occasionally timed or console only) roster that was more diverse and daring than Microsoft. And Sony was able to go toe to toe with Microsoft on their own set of exclusive betas and DLC for a few big name AAA games—likely a reflection of Sony’s stronger momentum and sales heading into E3.
Almost all those news was revealed in the first hour. Then came a lackluster middle section that dragged with a scattershot focus and left viewers with more questions than answers. They hawked a graphic-novel TV series with only concept art to show; its ten minutes on stage killed the presser’s momentum. A firm date was set for an “open beta” for the Playstation Now streaming service but few details on games and pricing were offered. The Project Morpheus VR platform was glanced over while Sony’s Andrew House punched down at the Xbox’s Kinect. The PS Vita was mostly ignored; no bundle with the PS4, no price drop, and few standout games.
Overall, Sony’s presentation felt like a slightly larger missed opportunity compared to Microsoft, but neither side was particularly earth-shattering. One factor this E3 has made clear is that many hyped games have been pushed back well into 2015, so it’s unlikely Sony or Microsoft will have a big system seller on its hands this year. There are two notable exceptions: Destiny (a strong performance could overshadow the Halo series and thus help Sony) and The Master Chief Collection (which, if Halo fanatics show up in droves for, could help Microsoft close the gap.) Either way, it’s going to be fascinating to see how each company positions their consoles this holiday season. It’s smaller, intangible factors that could now make a deciding difference among those that haven’t jumped in this console generation.
A few days away from the big E3 press conferences, Nathan Grayson over at Kotaku has mixed feelings and some nostalgia for what the event meant to him during his childhood. There’s also some good interviews with game industry veterans about the E3 of today: how it’s changed and whether it’s still relevant.
Mark Serrels, writing for Kotaku:
Just. Another. Shooter.
It feels like gamers, as consumers, are getting over shooting things in the face. And pretty damn soon I suspect they’ll become wary of paying for the privilege. It’s all just too familiar, too worn out. We need a new verb to enjoy. Once upon a time we jumped. We punched and occasionally kicked things. Then we mostly just shot things. We’ve been shooting things for too long. What will our new verb be?
This post indirectly supports yesterday’s editorial I wrote on Microsoft, Kinect, and the company’s big bet on AAA exclusives. In particular, another weakness of AAA games is their lack of flexibilty. With their huge budgets and often multi-year development cycle, they can’t easily adjust to changing consumer tastes.
Where’s the Microsoft that hailed the Xbox One as the digital, “all in one” future of our living rooms? Now that the gaming console is available without Kinect, it’s a future that feels increasingly out of reach.
Granted, decoupling Kinect is a shrewd decision to spike sales and reach price parity with the PS4. And with fickle voice commands and a virtually non-existent Kinect gaming lineup, Microsoft hasn’t justified Kinect’s required bundling. Yet I’m worried this is a short term business call that could hobble the Xbox One in the long run.
With Kinect originally bundled with every Xbox One sold, Microsoft had a multimedia and convergence angle over the PS4. The accessory adds voice control, motion gaming, an IR blaster to control your cable box, Skype, interactive fitness classes and much more. While much of its ambition wasn’t realized on day one, the long term potential is enormous; it’s Microsoft’s trojan horse of a gaming console to win over a larger general public. If traditional core console gaming falls out of favor long term, Microsoft would be far better equipped to pivot with a Kinect attached to every Xbox.
Now without Kinect, the PS4 pulls ahead of the Xbox One in several tangible ways. First, raw performance, as evidenced by better frame rates and higher resolutions across several multi-platform titles. It’s a tiny, even negligible factor for every day consumers, but a potential selling factor among core gamers. Also the PS4 trumps Xbox on indie releases as well; Microsoft has been playing catch up with their ID@Xbox division, but their releases are less notable and diverse than Sony’s.
Finally, there’s the user interface, an underrated factor among a mainstream audience. While the PS4 “horizontal ribbon” style UI is a bit simplistic and lacks customization, it works effectively for launching games and tracking online activity. The XBox One’s comparatively complex UI was designed around voice for primary navigation; using just a controller is often awkward. Microsoft is claiming any controller navigation shortcomings will be addressed in future system updates but for now this puts a Kinect-less Xbox at a disadvantage.
In short, power, indies, UI and sales momentum all favor the PS4. What’s left are games. Microsoft will likely focus heavily, if not entirely, on gaming for their E3 keynote this year. They’re betting on their financial strength to shore up more first and third party exclusives than Sony.
Granted, exclusives have spiked consoles sales historically, most notably in the form of Wii Sports several years ago. This being 2014, I wonder if we’re in a changed gaming landscape. Like other forms of media, modern gaming user bases are now heavily fragmented across multiples tastes and platforms. I suspect big budget exclusives – the Halos and Mario Karts of the world – are losing their impact. Titanfall is a prime example; its twist on the multiplayer shooter genre was critically lauded upon release, but the game’s online community is far smaller and less active than the Battlefield and Call of Duty releases from previous years. The incentive for AAA publishers to go multi-platform has never been stronger: as budgets escalate, spreading a release among as many platforms as possible makes strong financial sense. Both the PS4 and Xbox One have similar, PC-like architecture which makes porting easier than previous console generations.
Even if exclusives are still the system sellers they once were, what if Sony comes out of this E3 swinging with a strong showing of their own? What moves does Microsoft have left?
It didn’t have to be this way. Perceptions of momentum aside, the Xbox One has time to catch up without gutting the Kinect this early; Xbox One sales, while significantly less than the PS4, are still strong with at least five million units shipped as of a month ago. The XBox One is even beating the original Xbox 360 sales by 76 percent when comparing each console’s first six months at retail. There are a lot of smaller, yet substantial actions to chase the PS4 on price; they could have packed in a few free games, a year of Xbox Live Gold, or just slashed the console’s price by $50.
Overall, the Xbox One could have been a device with a unique, even visionary ambition if Microsoft had stuck to their initial ambitions. However, sans Kinect, it’s a console without a strong voice and differentiator from its competition.
A guest Kotaku post by Naughty Dog’s Alexandria Neonakis on UI design within one of the most critically acclaimed games from 2013. I love seeing how the interface changed over time. It’s an especially cool look considering how rarely we get behind-the-scenes access to AAA game design.
Game journalist/host Geoff Keighley’s “Final Hours” series continues with the much anticipated first-person shooter released earlier this year, Titanfall. I downloaded the app over this last weekend on my iPad and after getting through roughly half the content it’s impressive overall. Note it’s effectively a 25000 word story with some multimedia features added, mostly behind the scenes photos and videos during the game’s making.
Note there’s a few small annoyances (that may be rectified on platforms outside the iPad): there’s no text size adjustment and the app is locked into landscape mode only. Still well worth the $2 entry fee for the quality and depth of writing alone.
Mark Serrels, writing for Kotaku:
I can’t remember another transition that has felt so half-hearted, so conservative, so burdened by a reluctance to place proper, major bets on new technology…Despite the fact that the Xbox 360 and PS3 had been at the forefront of one of the longest generations I can remember, there was the sense that no-one had faith in the next generation of consoles.
Everyone was in a secure, definitive holding pattern.
As Mark goes onto write, both the Xbox One and PS4 have been selling very well, far better than a lot of the naysayers predicted. The results:
Now we have millions of new console owners with brand new boxes in their homes and nothing to do with them. Because development is long term game. It’s a big arse ship on the open sea and it takes an incredible amount of time to make an about turn.
It’s here that I think there’s more to the story. It’s true that pivoting fast is extremely difficult for AAA titles – true big budget PS4 and Xbox One exclusives (as in, not on any other console platform) should remain few and far between for this reason for a pretty long time, at least another year or two. You’re going to see a lot of cross-gen games with upgraded graphics on the Xbox One and PS4 and little changes elsewhere. Not only are big budget titles hard to switch up mid stream, the very nature of it being high budget and thus high risk makes it important to keep the sales base as wide as possible across multiple platforms.
But I do think indies, will fill out the release calendar significantly. It’s already the case with my PS4: this is the first console I’ve ever owned where smaller indie games like Resogun, Pinball Arcade and Mercenary Kings have about as much combined play time as the more traditional, big budget AAA releases like Assassin’s Creed 4 and Infamous: Second Son.
The Last of Us was an amazing game that really pushed the adventure genre forward. So it bummed me out after finishing it that I didn’t buy the collector’s edition that contained this 85 minute making of documentary. Fortunately for all of us it’s available now for free streaming on Amazon.
There’s a few moments that feel a bit too effusive (it’s clearly an “authorized” doc) but largely it’s excellent, an excellent watch for almost anyone who likes narrative-driven gaming. There’s a lot of interviews with the cast, developers, sound engineers, raw footage from the mo-cap studio and much more.
Major props to Giant Bomb’s Jeff Gerstmann for keeping the hype meter in check and not giving a final review of an entirely online-only game yet. And if there’s any commentary that stands out about one of the most anticipated games of this year, it’s this:
Titanfall doesn’t have time for that nonsense; it’s way too focused on being a great multiplayer shooter for people who already enjoy them. That leads to an interesting conundrum and a package that manages to be laser-focused on a specific type of gameplay, which can make it also feel a little too small. It all comes down to how much you already enjoy these games and how badly you want something that updates the Call of Duty formula in some new, exciting ways.
That’s a great summary. A significant evolution of the traditional first person shooter genre but it’s not necessarily going to convert the unconverted.