Best thing for Xbox to do (IMO) is shorten the announcement to release cycle from multiple years to 6-12 months.
It’d mean taking less resources away from development to create trailers (since the game would be pretty polished already) and it’d also mean seeing gameplay at announcement instead of CG.
With the amount of projects they have, they really don’t need to talk about games 3-4 years in advance. Would also leave enough room to keep third parties in the show.
This is really true. Xbox can’t even do a show focused on undies without people whining about the devs talking about their games.
“Xbox doesn’t really get the pass that Sony and Nintendo get when they have trash shows.”
People will absolutely trash an xbox third party showcase or one where first party games aren’t show that much.
This is why it would be ao awesome them announcing like a persona 6 at one of their events. The amount of tears will be delicious.
If I was given free realm of Xbox marketing for one day this is what I would do. I would focus on unifying the Xbox brand. I would have two main events:
Next on Xbox
This event would be similar to Nintendo Directs and PlayStation State of Plays. Shorter, 20-30 minute showcases which show updates on existing games, upcoming games to Game Pass, demos, and announcements of “smaller” games from Xbox first party, ID@Xbox games, and games that Xbox has marketing/publishing/exclusivity deals with.
An event like this will keep people updated on the latest Xbox news and new Game Pass additions. Combining this news with updates on live service games allows the news to reach a much larger audience. For example, announcing the new season of Warzone 2 will bring a lot more of a casual audience to check out news that they might’ve never actually looked for. Having big live service games announce their updates would be similar to “the next Smash character” hype that surrounded almost every Direct. Could even be more implicit and announce a new Overwatch 2 character to draw the competitive PC FPS scene into watching as well! Hell, “the next Smash character” hype could even be what the big Game Pass game of the month will be, imagine the hype to see a sizzle reel of what is coming to Game Pass soon and even hearing “Play X game right after this presentation as part of your Game Pass subscription!”, this is the unification I want to see out of Xbox.
Next on Xbox also serves as a game-specific event. For example, A Redfall edition of Next on Xbox would announce any new Game Pass announcement for that game, maybe one or two ID@Xbox titles but the majority of the show would be dedicated to a deep-dive of Redfall.
Xbox has so many different audiences that having news for all these games can bring a lot of people to check out not just what that game has to offer, but what Xbox has to offer. I think this is important because Xbox currently is very fragmented. Studios are left to market their own games for most of the year. Rare did a dedicated live stream for Sea of Thieves roadmap, but how many people that aren’t already interested in Sea of Thieves are going to check that out? Next on Xbox would remedy this.
Xboxcon Xbox’s “E3” show.
A multi-day convention for all things Xbox. Hopefully this could be a live in-person convention. This would be a massive blow out of Xbox news, updates, and massive new game announcements. It would combine Quakecon, Minecon, and Blizzcon with the force of Xbox Game Studios (and Activision since I don’t believe their games are announced at Blizzcon). The goal of Xboxcon would be to further unify all these games under the brand, there will be no confusion what family Minecraft, Overwatch, and Call of Duty belong to.
It all starts with a Next on Xbox, ideally this event would be kept between 60 to 90 minutes. This Next on Xbox will be rapid fire. Tons of new announcements, new Game Pass additions, demos, and a general overview of upcoming updates to XGS + Bethesda + ABK games. This would be the show where the new Call of Duty is announced. Game announcements should not last too long as there is a lot of news to go over! Instead at the end of trailers for games that warrant it, there will a notice to check out a deep dive into what’s new for that game at a specific time slot during the convention. For example, a trailer of Call of Duty: Black Ops (reboot) shows. This will be to draw a ton of hype and get eyes on the show. At the end of the trailer, it will say “Learn more about Call of Duty: Black Ops on Day 2 of Xboxcon at 1 p.m. PT”. This is similar to how Nintendo handles new updates to their games, when they announced Animal Crossing: New Horizons — Happy Home Paradise DLC in a Direct, they showed a quick trailer but then said “Check out the dedicated Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct on X day to learn more!”
At the end of the day, Xboxcon would serve as a celebration of all things Xbox. It will show everyone that even if you only care about Minecraft or Overwatch or Call of Duty, these are all apart of the Xbox family and there is so much more to it than just that one game you like.
In conclusion, my biggest issue with Xbox for years now has always been marketing. Shows are definitely a big part but also how fragmented Xbox is. It feels like they leave their studios to do a lot of the marketing which really hurts the Xbox community as a whole. People are more fans of specific games rather than the family of games Xbox has to offer, unlike Nintendo and Sony where it seems like a lot of people support games just because their favorite system backs that game. I’m not a big fan of having 343i do any major Halo updates on their own live streams and blog or Sea of Thieves putting out their roadmap for their year on a stream with 30K viewers which 99% of them already care about Sea of Thieves to go out of their way to watch. I want these games to feel apart of Xbox, properly. I think that’s what Xbox has been missing more than anything.
I really like what EA are doing with the Dead Space remake, how they are bringing the fans along with them.
This is a really good idea. Smaller ‘Xbox Direct’ events as necessary & a big blowout each year.
Would love to see it.
I think it’s plainly obvious, and most people are ignoring this, all of MS’s studios and partner studios are very comfortable with how MS does their shows. For instance, Avalanche doesn’t have to worry about coming up with deliverables for some “Xbox Direct” show in January, so they have more time to focus on making the game.
Inside Xbox was a good name, but issue is name might’ve been sullied
when your objective is to engage a niche this is a good strategy, but I have no idea about what is happening with Dead Space.
I thought a bit more about this topic and, tbf, this whole discussion is just happening because we have no idea of what is coming to Xbox in 2022 and when. We just know Starfield and Redfall will come 2022 for sure and this is awful considering how many studios XGS has now.
The fact that the only window Xbox does announcements is the E3 is what makes this whole first half of 2022 so troublesome for us.
It shouldn’t be anything like that SoP. Lol.
Hopefully all the wee desperados stop whining incessantly about how Xbox needs to do more shows. Who am i kidding, the same chatter will be happening again in a few weeks time i bet, lol
Whatever the Xbox direct ends up being it should not be what we had today at the state of play
As its been said multiple times, its not the structure that impacts gamer perception but the actual content. The State of Play structure is fine. The content was not.
A lot of State of Plays end up feeling like “this could have been an email”.
Today’s state of play is exactly why I don’t have strong feelings about this. Dat Cowabunga Collection tho…
Not what a State of Play normally is quality wise, that’s for sure.
I dunno. This is now the new normal quality of State of Plays when looking at the past year.