More Thoughts From Me E3 Special Edition: Beautiful Xbox One Games

I just watched the Microsoft press conference. There was one thing that most of the games shared: they were beautiful. The Xbox One graphics were stunning. But what about the games themselves? Welcome to the first More Thoughts From Me special edition of this E3. Here are my thoughts on Microsoft’s E3 2016!

I didn’t know what to expect from Microsoft this year. I’m not an Xbox fan right now and so I haven’t been keeping up with the news on games. I don’t know if any of the games announced today were announced previously or not. All I know is that Microsoft showed a bunch of games and most of them looked pretty. But how did I feel about the gameplay shown?

Most of Microsoft and their third party partners games were war games or fighting games. As my dad and I noted, there wasn’t much variety to be had when it came to Xbox One games. I was impressed by Recore, Final Fantasy 15, and Sea of Thieves from Rare though. Its nice to see Rare doing what could be a pretty cool multiplayer game. Still, I was really happy when Microsoft did show off a game that was not war or fighting related.

The single game that wasn’t a fighting or war game from Microsoft was the new Forza. As I mentioned in a previous column, I’m not a fan of Forza games. Even so, I thought the graphics were amazing on this one and the Off-Road gameplay looked like a lot of fun. That said, it wasn’t the games from Microsoft that impressed me the most…it was the indie games.

The Indie games from Xbox ID looked like a ton of fun. I was especially impressed by We Happy Few. This game made me think of Bioshock quite a bit, with a touch of Fallout too. The graphics were impressive for an Indie game and the surreal gameplay and story caught my attention. There were other indie games that looked cool too, but We Happy Few certainly stood out from the pack. Of course, the announcement from Microsoft that everyone will be talking about is the two new systems they announced!

Microsoft’s announcement for the Xbox S came at the top of the conference and at the end of the conference, they announced a new console for next year called (for now) Project Scorpio. They said that with the two systems, Xbox One players won’t be left behind. I gotta disagree with this. Its only been three years since Xbox One was released and now Microsoft is hoping that’ll you’ll buy not just one new console, but two! Why is Microsoft in a rush to move to the next generation so soon? There are two answers to this question. The first is pretty obvious: Microsoft is trying to get the jump on Nintendo by announcing their two system(s). Especially announcing their new Scorpio system is important for them because that’ll be going head to head with Nintendo’s NX next year. The other answer is that Xbox One isn’t doing as well as the Playstation 4. Microsoft is out to make more money. This could backfire on them.

How will this backfire on them? Well, unless your a really rich person, why would you want to buy the Xbox S when you can get the better system next year? I wonder if announcing two systems at the same time was wise. I know if I was planning to buy an Xbox I would wait till next year. But to tell the truth, I didn’t see anything in this conference that made me want an Xbox.

Yes, the games are beautiful. The indies in particular looked fun. But none of the games shown to today made me want to run out and buy one of the systems. And I think buying an Xbox One right now would be foolish anyway. If you already have one, thats great. You’ll have fun with the games that are coming. But if you don’t, well, you should wait till next year for the Scorpio because it’ll play all the current games plus whatever new games they’ll do doing. At least thats what it sounded like. Who knows if the Scorpio will really live up to the hype…

I think Microsoft did good with this conference. Definitely better than last year. Even so, this was a show for the fans. I’m not sure it would really sell anyone new one the systems or the games.

What do you all think? Did you like Microsoft’s Xbox conference? What was your favorite game? And what do you make of the two new consoles they announced? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Stay tuned. I’ll have a More Thoughts about Sony later tonight or sometime tomorrow. I’ll also be writing about Nintendo tomorrow!

More Thoughts From Me is an opinion column. All the thoughts presented here are mine and mine alone.