MS never said they would have a meaningful presence here at ONL. R&C frankly seems to have done nothing to help hype the game up and if anything disappointed ppl expecting something actually new. I also think having the chance to see how the rifts actually work in the game outside the context of a magical SSD showcase made more ppl see it was not as special as they imagined. The idea that R&C tonight was a ‘world premier’ anything is a real crock and ppl should hold Geoff accountable for that kinda crap.
The fault for the disappointment is squarely on Geoff this time imho. MS did not do anything at all to suggest they had some big presence here.
That said, you’re right that Xbox needs to show actual gameplay on retail hardware, but so does Sony. Sony has been showing stuff from dev kits and ppl are thinking it was retail units. They have literally done exactly the same thing as MS has except they get a free pass for whatever reason. MS just has games on PC too so that build serves as the target build that gets shown off. COVID has really screwed things up a lot for the lead into this next gen.
I accept they bet everything on Halo for launch. It’s the fact that it seems they don’t have anything else to show for 2021 is more damning.
Xbox Game Studios was on the list of publishers at the show. I don’t think Geoff did anything to hype up anything really. He even said to keep expectations in check before the actual show. My point is that Xbox might as well not showed up with what they had to offer. We didn’t need another commercial for Game Pass.
I also don’t agree with the notion about what MS and Sony are doing as the same. True Sony might be showing games off of a dev kit, but at least it’s supposed to be representative of what we’ll see on the PS5. From a Halo demo played on a mid/high-range PC to a 30fps demo of Forza, we haven’t seen anything that gives us any idea what to expect from the Series X. They could at least give us a taste of current gen games with Series X updates but we haven’t even gotten that outside of the short clips in DF videos. I understand and sympathize with everyone in the industry over how COVID has impacted them all. However that hasn’t prevented Sony or 3rd party companies from at least showing something. It’s just shocking to how badly MS seem to be prepared to properly market their next gen console.
I just wish they’d give us a reason to be excited about the damn system outside of bullshit marketing speak and Game Pass.
Yes great OS, but im not saying the OS is the only reason lol.
I like great AAA next games too im not debating that im correcting you saying that ms “bet it all on halo” they didnt and the points i provided prove that.
Geoff touting over 20 games, then 38 games was hyping up big game announcements. But MS never hyped anything at all for this show. Why would they not show something small if the alternative is to show nothing? Makes no sense. That is the opposite of the ‘they didn’t show enough’ argument, lol. If the complaint is they didn’t show enough, how does showing literally nothing help?
The only difference as far as how stuff is shown is that MS is more transparent about what it is actually running on. PS5 dev kits were most likely PC’s too. MS just said so on their end or used appropriate terminology whereas Sony was more opaque. I agree, we haven’t seen nearly enough, but my point is, what did Sony even show that was real and noteworthy? R&C, but that isn’t a launch game. We have seen more of The Medium. GT7 was shown but looks super rough and isn’t at launch. We have other stuff on Xbox that was gameplay too btw. ExoMecha, Bright Memory Infinite, Ascent…it just feels like you’re finding reasons to ignore the Xbox stuff and gloss over the PS5 stuff is all.
Frankly 3rd parties aren’t showing jack crap either. Still no next gen AC Valhalla footage. Nothing meaningful at all from EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda, 2K, no next gen footage from Activision…
Sony showed us 2 games that were meaningful and one looked current gen. The other was shown twice for whatever reason and neither are launch titles. I think you are underestimating how much of this is due to COVID. Sony is just as far behind as MS and 3rd parties imo.
Btw, Forza is gonna be 2021 almost guaranteed. As is Halo obviously. Everwild is likely 2021 too imho. If Flight Sim misses launch, it will be 2021 sometime as well. What does Sony have? GT7, R&C…? I feel like ya have this double standard at play man. Just keepin it real.
You are seeing what happens when a company decides to go all in on cross-gen for a few years. The Series X isn’t going to have much to show off from MS, and that is all Phil and management’s fault. That is undeniable.
However, they will be fine in a few years, and just have to live off of third parties and Indies until then. And backwards compatibility will be important for MS to keep them in the game until software is actually ready. This won’t be a problem for me since I had a 1S, and there is a lot to catch up on at launch. I just feel sorry for those wanting a new experience, because it isn’t coming until 2022 at the earliest
I agree that there is, or should be, more to the launch of the Series X than just Halo. Some of these bullet points seem like a stretch though. Great OS? I don’t play the OS. You mention great games, but what games exactly? That’s part of the problem, we just don’t know what great games will be there at launch.
My point in saying they shouldn’t have shown up at all is from the angle that if you’re not going to bring something that’s exciting, then don’t show. If you don’t have something to promote your next gen launch outside of a Game Pass commercial, don’t bother. You’ll only look desperate and disappointing compared to pretty much everyone else. Honestly, I’d probably be bothered less by their presence if they just showed AOE and not bothered with the stupid Game Pass commercial. They are leaning on the service waaaaay too much and I start to get bothered when their next gen initiative is suffering due to it.
I also can’t agree with MS being more transparent when they announce the system with Hellblade 2 “as being built to take full advantage of Xbox Series X”. If that isn’t marketing speak, I don’t know what is. Meanwhile we’ve seen GT7 (warts and all), Ratchet and Clank, Godfall, Horizon, CoD BLOPs, and even UE5, the largest licensed engine in the industry, all with a connection to the PS5. The amount of mindshare this brings, not only with the consumers but also with the development community is massive compared to what MS have done.
Speaking of the Series X announcement, it was a great example of how to properly market your machine. A trailer that makes you pay attention with wonder, then a bold reveal of the system, even with the somewhat confusing name. Then followed up with a vision of what they think the system could achieve. It was brilliant and certainly got everyone talking about it after the show was over. Going into this year, they have a blow out of info between the digital foundry coverage to just randomly dropping the full specs with absolutely no build up. It was all master class marketing that kept everyone’s attention on their next gen plans. Then they apparently fired everyone with talent at the marketing team and fell back on their Merica bullshit marketing tactics of overhyping and underdelivering hoping to cover it up with marketing catch phrases and flashy CGI trailers.
It’s just frustrating to see when all I want is to see more of what the system can do. So no, I don’t think I have double standards. I just don’t think I’m giving them a pass for not giving us any reason to be excited about their new system outside of game pass.
The hilariously ironic thing here is that Sony will show the games, and does a good job of showing actual gameplay. But they won’t show anything about the hardware. MS has the opposite issue. They have shown the hardware, interface, etc … But there are no games that have actually been confirmed to run on an Series X
And it’s getting a little late in the game for both companies
It should be expected that the majority of media and gamers to not be enthused with the Xbox Series launch (at this point). Back in 2018 when Microsoft revealed that they had just began to reinvest and that the cupboard was otherwise bare, I assumed 2021 would be a tough year and that the first year to 18 months would be carried by Halo and Forza. Covid didn’t create the situation but it made it worse. Microsoft’s lack of growth in marketing and messaging isn’t helping overcome.
If exclusive games are why you buy a console, then Xbox gamers with those priorities will buy Series X only if they like what they see in the future much like Playstation gamers did this gen. Some will buy it because Game Pass is a must have service and they want the best versions of the games in the service (that’s me). Or because multiplats like Cyberpunk perform better.
That said, I still assume that Halo is only a 6 month delay until further info proves otherwise. It doesn’t sound like they’re doing a campaign reboot so it’s logical they’ll want it to make the fiscal year. 6 month is really not a lot of time in the scheme of anything. A lot of these conversations are going to be forgotten this time next year if some of Microsoft’s bets pay off. Bets include the Halo delay and also waiting for full RDNA2 and DX12U updates which meant tools and dev kits coming in late.
Enthusiasts should take deep breaths. It’s going to be a really good gaming generation. There’s a ton of potential. Microsoft is investing a lot into gaming. Likely will invest more than any platform or publisher next gen. Everything from studios, to partnerships, to tools to the potential innovations from ML and cloud will make next gen much more exciting than this one.
If I had a complaint, it’s that I still don’t believe they are good at connecting to the hardcore from a marketing and messaging standpoint. It’s the only area of Xbox that reminds me of the old team. Average gamer on message boards do a better job articulating what’s going on than they do. I’ve gotten over it however. In the near 2 decades I’ve gamed on Xbox, I feel like they only knew how to speak to gamers for about 2 years of their life span. I don’t see signs that’s improving. Best just to focus on what things of substance they’re doing rather than what they’re showing or saying. Xbox is like that guy with a good job, who’s in great shape but can’t get a girl because he’s awkward and got no game. My decision is to stop worrying about about what they say and look at what they are doing that will result in quality content in the big picture.
I think you might be the only person alive thinking MS came away looking ‘desperate’ here. I think GP is a much bigger pull for console launch sales than you give it credit for. Xbox gamers are used to it, but starting fresh with new consumers hopping into next gen, stuff like All Access and GP are gonna blow ppl’s minds. Walking into a store and coming away with XSX and several hundred playable games without putting a dime down is potentially big.
Hellblade ran in real time on a dev kit. They could have just as well said it was ‘running on XSX’ like Sony does but they didn’t stake that claim as it wouldn’t be fully true. You did not see a single frame of Horzon’s gameplay. It was no different than Hellblade was…a real time cutscene running a dev kit for a game yrs away most likely. Godfall and GT looked current gen though. So does CoD. Hellblade > UE tech demo as far as real time visuals goes. What about smaller titles like Ascent, The Medium, ExoMecha? How come everyone ignores indies, even when they are showing off graphics tech rly well?
I do agree that MS needs to drastially improve their marketing and fast. Not because Sony is doing decent or good (they aren’t even doing decent), but because for Xbox’s own sake there is no good reason for stuff to not be planned for big events like this one. I share your frustration there.
The dev community is very shortly going to be transformed radically with machine learning stuff and PS5 won’t be doing any of that. I would not worry about what a handful of no name devs have to say about PS5 development, especially when most of that was reacting to UE which will run as good or better on XSX anyhow.
I feel frustrated soemtimes coming from the pov of having total confidence in MS’s platform building from top to bottom but also being annoyed that their marketing is not competent enough to showcase it. If that is what you are feeling, I’m right there with ya man! At the same time, that is a hot take and not really a well thought out position wrt this particular show or how it compares to how well other companies are marketing their stuff. Sony is getting free passes here courtesy of PS4’s success, but it ain’t materially doing a notably better job imho. It’ll help immensely once third parties are ready to show their stuff off on XSX finally.
If you think Sony isn’t already working with ML I have a bridge to sell you. Project Athia developers were adamant on using it to speed up development - read a good article on it from the Luminous team. And it isn’t going to be some magic pill that will suddenly make everything better - it’s just a tool in the tool box. If it did, that would be to the Series S and PS5’s benefit anyway in order to make up for a few teraflops difference. Maybe it will help the S to be competitive against vastly superior technology …
I use ML code for networking stufff at work, and it is cool but not really a game changer or anything. Not yet at least.
That last part hits home for me too (and I suspect KageMaru as well). I actually would really like to see some in the press take Phil to task for that one element. I feel like they are quite out of touch wrt what to show and when to show it. For instance, showing game engine trailers is fine to introduce a game announcement, but follow that up with an actual in-engine tech demo and call out the RT and new graphics tech and all that jazz.
FlightSim nailed it on their end of things. We need more of THAT. We need some more fan service. For instance, Joe Staten and Certain Affinity back on Halo could have been saved as a surprise at an event if they frame it right. Having actual details to talk about wrt Fable and maybe a quick in-engine tech demo of that or a dev diary or something. Same for Hellblade…just show the same trailer but let the camera be moved around. Just take what is there already in the dev side and surface it to thirsty gamers. We want things that make our imagination run wild. We need tech demos like UE5 that make us think about graphics tech differently. VRS and ML can provide that. They could show off BC tech demos too, with ML being used for texture upres/HDR/etc.
It’s frustrating for sure. It rly does feel like they are too busy looking at stuff on paper to grasp how to flesh it out as an announcement.
Sony has no inference hardware in PS5 of any kind. That’s a massive issue in a few yrs time imho. Yes they can use it in development but not at runtime in anything. That is a whole other can of worms.
FlightSim demonstrates that it literally is a game changer btw.
Well, in order for it to be an actual game changer MS will need a LOT more of the market. Because game developers always cater to the market leader, and that isn’t going to change. Just look at how much is being made for the vastly technically inferior Switch right now - because the damn thing just sells. If it can run on the Switch, developers will port it.
Games will be made by third parties to cater to the PS5 crowd unless MS starts actually caring about consoles sold, and that is why you won’t see a ton of innovation at the third party level. MS internal teams could do some nice things, as shown by their BC group
On the topic of ML, I think it’s fair to assume that every major company in the world that deals in tech is heavily invested in ML. I think most people misunderstand it though. It’s not all one thing. It’s not magic. It’s iterative. People get excited when they hear the term but it can literally mean many different things and have many use cases that impact all areas of development as well as what the products are capable of themselves.
Where Microsoft is a bit more exciting in this respect is that they are one of the top 3 or 4 companies in the world when it comes to AI, ML, deep learning, etc. Now that the top of Microsoft has bought into gaming, I expect Microsoft to try leveraging it as a competitive advantage in the gaming space. It’s not about whether you’re doing it. It’s about being innovative, effective and a leader in that area.
The have a Game Pass platform that allows them to take chances and iterate on products. During Game Stack they showed Ninja Theory working with Microsoft Research. Microsoft Research is a team that helps Microsoft be one of the leading AI companies in the world. Now they’re working with Ninja Theory to use Bleeding Edge as a test case for reinforcement learning.
All this is way off topic but thought I’d address the conversation on it in this thread. Sony and everyone is using ML. Xbox studios have a unique competitive advantage if they want to help lead on it’s use in gaming. Again there’s just a lot to be excited about with Xbox next gen. They just aren’t ready or don’t know how to sell it.
Honestly could Geoff be more obviously disinterested in Xbox? It’s so disingenuous we he talks about the platform. They really gotta get a new public facing…face for their events I mean PlayStation has Keighley, Greg Miller and other to name a few. Xbox needs influencers that aren’t like Austin Evans tier. I’m not at all surprised Geoff thinks that AAA should be the focus. But Xbox has those games. Marketing is the biggest issue for Xbox right now. It needs consistency and coherence. Like I see PS commercials daily on adult swim and other channels. I see nothing for Xbox. Really gotta wonder what’s going on. They have the hardware and the content, just gotta let people know so when things like this are said you can get ahead of it.
