I agree and sadly, it’s still bad in some places.
Coming off from the Xbox 360 I was really hyped for this but by the end I was sitting there scratching my head asking myself what had just happened.
Sony had a great reveal, but I feel like it was Microsoft’s poor showing rather than Sony’s strong show that pushed me to start this gen with a PS4.
If the Xbox One console reveal wasn’t so horrible this E3 would have been remembered more fondly. I’ll admit it even swayed my view on what was otherwise a really strong conference. At the time we didn’t know what the quality of those games would be so the conference actually aged very well. I’d give it a strong C light B
It depends on if we mean just their conference or their e3 as a whole. I feel the conference itself and what they showed on offer for xbox one was pretty good, they had promised to show games at e3 and they delivered. That e3 as a whole still from what I recall suffers from some of the more either tone deaf interview responses or the overall blow for blow with other stuff was not great, namely getting blindsided on price. Overall I would say good conference, bad e3, probably a C grade overall.
The E3 event was good, people confuse the console reveal as being at E3.
I will say this about the console reveal. I don’t even think the majority of the backlash was from the Xbox users. The backlash came from the non-Xbox users who 1. Saw an opportunity to strike using the anti-consumer angle and 2. There was genuine fear that the strategy was going to work.
I’ll expand on #2 a bit. We all know publishers have been looking to find a way around used games and if this got the full support of one or more of the big publishers it would be really bad for that other console. Imagine EA giving priority to Xbox for Madden and FIFA for example. Activision and Call of Duty, etc… The Xbox could have potentially got a wave of exclusives from publishers looking to avoid the used game market. I have to imagine people were thinking this. Always online and lack of used games may have been a thing, but I believe this was the greater fear.
I personally think the whole thing was publisher driven and that Sony had something similar in place. I just seriously doubt publishers got something like this put into place with MS and didn’t have something similar going with Sony. PS Now and Game Pass were likely rooted in this initiative.
Probably why MS is refusing to go first on pricing, they are not letting Sony use going second to their advantage this time.
2013 E3 was very good and the Xbox one launch was also great, good launch lineup and in the following months we got Titanfall and then later that year Forza Horizon 2, Sunset Overdrive and Halo MCC, though that’s debatable due to the disastrous launch.
I wouldn’t be surprised either and Sony was smarter and let MS go first to see what reaction that would get from people and clearly it wasn’t good, just like they let MS go first on price as well. MS really wasn’t in a position to do something like that either as Xbox was just a growing brand, 2013 was so weird looking back because it was basically MS doing everything in their power to kill Xbox, had they not messed up so bad and I honestly believe Xbox would be the most popular console in the world right now, they had a massive sales gap in the US over Sony and in Europe the difference wasn’t as drastic and they also beat Sony in the UK, they were in a position to basically make Playstation irrlevant in the US just like Xbox is in Asia, they were in a position to dominate this current generation but didn’t take it and are still recovering from the damage even today.
To be honest, it was more than just places of such bad renown. It’s hard to forget Edge’s “this is your next console” issue, which was unprofessional in several ways, the worst offender being the satirical column that was not only written shockingly poorly for their literary standards at the time, but it was also in poor taste.
The ironic thing is consumers largly are using digital now, ms’s system may have benefited the digital transition. They should of approached it differently though.
I feel like a lot of people get Xbox’s E3 2013 show and the Xbox One reveal mixed up a lot.
I did not grade it because it is the past and Xbox is under new leadership, the top management completely changed as the strategy.
I also know some stories why it all happened how it happened. But that is for the books that will be written (or not).
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It was a good showcase. The launch price, the mandatory Kinect and the DRM didn’t sound good, but the actual game sharing and the likes was exciting to me.