And opt for more Nintendo direct style events. Imagine Inside Xbox…but actually GOOD (although shooting a guy out of a canon was pretty dope)…Less emphasis on multiplats and third party…more emphasis on first party…less emphasis on garbage like that State of Decay 2 haunted house crap with Smosh
Of course Nintendo is wanked more than both Playstation and Xbox combined so the viewership to find out the next Smash character is usually off the charts. However imagine if Xbox had a direct style even where, say for example the debuted Starfield gameplay and showed a trailer for Compulsions new game eg…and did this on a regular basis. They certainly could do one every other 2-4 months and constantly hyping new game trailers, releases, gameplay segments and maybe some other third party deals
I’d much rather prefer this then having to wait an entire year for E3 or an E3 style event…even their Gamescom showings have been fairly lackluster since 2015 and haven’t had too much to show.
I know last year at the VGA they showed Hellblade 2, the Series X, Gears Tactics and Ori but to be honest I think they should tone down showing games at these events and instead save them for their own shows…
Since E3 itself is pretty much dead and most likely not coming back, Microsoft should have their own Games Showcase (like this past July) in late May and then have X0?? in early November with Inside Xbox shows (but without the lame cringy crap) in late February and then in late August.
Two major showcases. Two minor showcases.
And throughout the year, Microsoft can have those 20-30 minute State of Play/Direct overview gameplay videos for each individual game that they’re releasing as part of their first party studios. They can also do a third party partner showcase to highlight the AA/Indie games that have coming like Crossfire X/The Ascent/Bright Memory Infinite/etc.
Basically, the entire year would have either major/minor/individual game “events” with plenty of reveals, gameplay overview trailers, news, information, etc.
Best way to tackle it is do what they’re currently doing with E3, Gamescom, and maybe a surprise at game awards. However, they need to do shadow drops and show a deep dive into gameplay, and can do that with games that they’ve already announce. Like having an uncut demo of 10-20 minutes of hellblade 2, fable, everwild, forza, etc. would be huge, and I think Microsoft needs to find the fine balance between trailers that doesn’t show gameplay, and showing gameplay content. I do feel having cinematic trailers is important, but also need to back it up with gameplay
Directs work for Nintendo since they have an established audience expecting those cute and memorable Nintendo games to be showcased - alongside a few 3p surprises etc…
But I’m not sure they work for anyone else since you want to have that bombastic style presentation to hammer home your games in most cases. I wonder about biannual Xbox games showcases - maybe one in Spring and one in fall. I sort of agree that perhaps the E3 model needs refinement and more regular news is necessary but I also don’t want everything spread so thinly that people feel underwhelmed by it.
Yeah that’s my point. And also Nintendo have the luxury of being on their own kind of thing. They can put up teasers for games with nothing and their audience laps it up and everyone else just carries on. But you can’t do that on Xbox - a non gameplay trailer is suddenly ripped apart the game is years away or in development trouble and all the podcasts are discussing what it means, why are xbox doing this, when is the game, why is the studio saying this and not that…and so on.
I’m curious if they would let Bethesda do their own showcase separately still because that would certainly draw in people that wouldn’t necessarily watch Xbox’s showcase.
Oh, I like E3 and its live audience. The reaction to announcements like backwards compatibility is something that sticks with you forever. I think Microsoft should maintain at least one big live event per year and also tackle the Nintendo Direct approach. I don’t particularly like Inside Xbox.
The one thing that needs a major overhaul imo is Inside Xbox. The May Inside Xbox was a nice improvement I think, but there’s still room for more.
But yes starting next year I think they’ll have enough games in the pipeline to just show stuff pretty often. It doesn’t need to be a huge production or anything, just updates and trailers, announcements.
Smash is an entirely different beast all together though…Usually Sakurai and Nintendo will do a 30+ minute video going into the details of a new Smash character. Its not just that the directs get a ton of viewers, they have a ton of retention (Smash Ultimate is a 2 year old game now and still gets people to show up in droves)
The only franchise MS has that’s more popular than Smash is Minecraft and the audience is waaaay too different (ei children, casuals) that they probably won’t turn out for a 30 minute Minecraft demo like Smash fans do for a Smash Direct. Also the updates Minecraft has aren’t usually as meaningful as a new Smash character.
Of course this could change, MS is going to have tons of first party games going forward so they can probably make 20-30 minute events dedicated to a single game. If they did a 20-30 minute game demo of Starfield or TES6 then people would show up for it in droves.
Yep, I like what sony is doing with the big games, 15 minutes of gameplay with devs talking about the game. With Starfield, Fable, Halo Infinite, Avowed and Hellblade 2 I think they could do something similar.
