Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has said that this year’s E3 this is going be the best ever for Microsoft – I’m pretty sure they all say that every year. However, when you think about the potential line up for games, he could actually be on to something.
In my opinion, I don’t think Microsoft had a bad E3 last year, no it wasn’t great, but it was pretty solid. I know a lot of people don’t share the same opinion as me. They therefore have to pull it out of the bag this year.
So what can we expect to see?
I think it’s a fairly safe bet that there will be some news about Windows 10, yes, they’ve said they want to focus on games, but it’s inevitable that the new OS will pop up at some point. But you know what, I don’t mind that. I’m actually pretty interested to see what Windows 10 has to offer for both PC and Xbox One owners.
The idea of cross platform gaming has been something that I loved the sound of for ages, and I know that the Microsoft team are looking in to this with Fable Legends (which I think we will hear more about at this point) being the first game announced to have cross play between PC and Xbox One, and I’m excited to see what else might follow suit.
I know that from an indie developers point of view, Windows 10 could offer a lot of potential as they look to implement the Windows universal app platform. This allows you to build one app that runs on all Windows 10 devices, which should make it a lot easier for developers to get games and apps on to multiple platforms at once.
I’m expecting an announcement that Xbox One preview members will gain access to a beta version of streaming gameplay to PC.
Then we will probably get a little bit of boring chat around numbers, “The Xbox brand has sold….. blah, blah.” No one cares, show me the games!
Let’s get the games that will definitely show up out of the way.
Halo 5: Guardians. There is no doubt about it, this game will be shown. The only question is, is how much, and what will it actually be? I’m thinking a fancy looking trailer, which then leads in to a small amount of gameplay from the campaign, but only a small amount. I think 343 will want to keep a lot of the game under wraps. Either way, there will be some HYPErventilating going on.
It has also been confirmed Crystal Dynamics and Turn 10 Studios will be making an appearance.
That means Rise of the Tomb Raider will be shown, and seeing as we got a trailer last year, it’s pretty safe to say that we will see some actual gameplay and get a release date either confirmed or penciled in, my monies on October time.
The presence of Turn 10, obviously means Forza Motorsport 6, which we all knew was coming. Personally I’m not really in to racing games, but there is no denying that the Forza franchise is one of the best racing franchises around right now.
I’m expecting to see some footage which will blur the lines of reality, and the only thing that will confirm what I’m seeing isn’t a real car will be a watermark that says “In-game engine footage.” or something to that effect.
Beyond those, nothing else has been confirmed yet. So, for now the rest is speculation, and speculate I will!
First up Quantum Break. I’m not really sure if we are going to see much of this actually. I’m thinking what we might see of it, will just be in a montage trailer of various games coming along. The reason I think this is because we already saw a gameplay demo last year at Gamescom, and I don’t think they’d really want to show more gameplay just yet. Plus as it’s reportedly been pushed back to 2016, they may not put emphasis on it due to that. I also don’t think they’d want to talk about it again too much without a more solid release date. Maybe it will pop up again at Gamescom later this year with release date being confirmed.
Then we have games like Scalebound and Phantom Dust, which aren’t really talked about all that much and a lot of people speculating that Phantom Dust may actually be cancelled. Both do have a pretty strong fan base already, and I know that those fans are dying to see a little more of both of these. I can’t see them giving up much time to them though, and they will probably only pop up in a trailer or two.
We also have Elite: Dangerous coming to Xbox One later this year, so I’m expecting to hear a little more on that with the announcement of a release date.
As for the remaining exclusives we have Crackdown, which we know is coming and Gears of War, which we’re pretty sure is coming in both a new series and a re-master.
Crackdown could only be a trailer at this point, with gameplay coming at Gamescom, as I don’t think we will be seeing this game until at least Q2 2016. Although I’m happy to be proven wrong.
That leaves us with Gears of War to wrap up the show for Microsoft, and I really hope this happens. Firstly with confirmation of the re-master and then closing on a teaser for the new Gears of War games coming from Black Tusk Studios *Mic drop*
I know that’s probably a long shot, but that would be a pretty amazing end to the show. Maybe Microsoft should just get me to sort it all out. I’d put on a great E3 presentation I think!
The show may be an hour and a half but it’s going to be tough to fit all of this in. And then we still have 3rd party games that are bound to make an appearance, plus all the awesome looking ID@Xbox games too.
Speaking of ID@Xbox games, there is one that I’m really hoping we see. Below. This game has gone really quiet since last year, and I’m desperate to see more of it, and get a release date.
I haven’t even mentioned the new project from Rare that’s meant to be in the works. Will we see this too? Surely we will hear something about what the game actually is.
Phil Spencer has also teased that there are some other first party game announcements that we don’t know about…
All in all E3 2015 could be pretty amazing. I’m trying to not get too far ahead of myself, as realistically I know that it’s probably unlikely that we’ll see all of these games. But it’s hard not to get excited about, in my opinion, such a great looking line up.
Less than two weeks to go now!
– Will
