Here’s the situation on Xbox: Strictly speaking, there are no Xbox exclusives anymore, and there have been for a while. All console exclusives are proudly coming to PC. Xbox is a consumer gaming hardware brand. Yes, it’s a box under your TV, but it’s also a Windows app, an Android app, and part of a much larger game publishing portfolio run by Microsoft. As a platform-agnostic company. Add games to Switch and PlayStation. You can even funnel your games directly to your TV, with no need for a console at all. So does that mean there’s no reason to own an Xbox anymore? Well, it’s entirely up to you. Xbox is an American gaming platform and its USP is a choice, for better or worse.
This means we’ve almost transcended the old paradigm of which box is best. Every major platform holder has its own proposition, image, and price barriers to entry. So it doesn’t matter whether the game shown on Sunday night is an exclusive, a console exclusive, or a limited-time game. The point is that the game is an Xbox game no matter where it is played. And Xbox games look great too.
We’ve made major updates to legacy IPs that have hitherto felt chronically underleveraged while Spencer & Co has been mired in a long string of acquisitions. Fighting PR fires over whether game We’re happily spending literally tens of billions of dollars on the aforementioned things. Fable and Perfect Dark look great. Both boast new gameplay trailers that suggest a carefully applied sense of how these properties should look and feel, while not shying away from updating them to suit modern tastes.
The look of Fable’s Bowerstone and dense forests feels classic and familiar, yet boasts a level of detail and implicit interactivity not found in the original game. Joanna Dark weaves her rebooted sci-fi world with the kind of acrobatic flair you always imagined, but on N64 you could hardly have any confidence. The classic IP you remember, rather than the actual IP, seems to be the guideline for both projects.
More classic IPs are set to enjoy their fresh time in the sun. DOOM: The Dark Ages promises to be the freshest take on the age-old FPS franchise since DOOM (2016). Flight Simulator 2024 looks like the most comprehensive update to Flight Sim 2020, adding real-world tasks beyond finding and eliminating houses. And its studio Machine Games has delivered a more visceral first-person take on the traditional Tomb Raider slash Uncharted archeology-themed game with Indiana Jones and The Great Circle. Entering a franchise. It sounds like your man Troy Baker would be a good fit for Harrison Ford’s version of the character. Perhaps a better Impressionist could have been found, but Baker’s playing was similar to a solid sound that left him a lot of room to make his own choices. This is really what you want when recasting an iconic role. In other words, it is a performance that is not creatively limited by previous works and one in which the audience feels immediately at home. The Holy Grail, if you will. Ahem.
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We certainly showed enough New Old Stuff to call Xbox’s showcase a success, but that was only a third of what was shown. We’re just around the corner with Obsidian’s third installment in the Pillars of the Eternity franchise: Avowed. Many fans of the studio can’t wait to get their hands on this piece. If the Outer Worlds are its own take on Fallout, then the Avowed are their elders. Scroll. Welcome to a quick stop on the long journey to TES 6. We were presented with a more substantial third-person action adventure in South of Midnight. Annapurna Interactive’s Mixtape is an adult skating adventure with a powerful licensed soundtrack from popular artists like Devo and Iggy Pop. Starfield’s major content update has left Beyonce out, and Shattered Space, the game’s major expansion scheduled for later this year, has finally been fully revealed.
Perhaps most importantly, and although this seems to be an industry-wide trend, the Xbox Showcase here was very illuminating on live service titles, multiplayer-only games, and MMOs. And most of what got involved was interests like Fallout 76, TES:O, WoW, etc. We’ve continued to see interesting and exciting single-player games of varying scope and scale from the studio. The numbers were very diverse and they made up a comfortable majority. I don’t feel overwhelmed by the endless list of ill-fated GAAS efforts, as it feels like we’ve had to endure this over the past few years.
In short, the console wars are over (as anyone with the mental age of 9 or older would have said). Xbox is good again and everyone benefits. Whether you buy an Xbox or not, Game Pass will still be a good deal in 2025, and with so many great games coming out, you won’t have time to play them all before you die. You know, it’s a really good position. See, everything dies. At least it’s not Phil Spencer’s fault.
Sony products were also good.
