Microsoft dominated the floor with their show today, announcing not only games for Xbox One, but also for the Hololens and Windows 10. A healthy mix of not only new games, but also new features for the Xbox One was announced at the show. The most surprising and welcome of these announcements was Backwards Compatibility with Xbox 360 games. It works not only with titles on the XBL Marketplace, but also with retail discs. You can check compatible games here (PDF Document). These games are playable right now for Xbox Preview members and will be rolled out during Holiday 2015. Along with that a new User Experience and Xbox Game Preview was announced. Xbox Game Preview is an early access model, but it has free demos for all it’s games.
Besides that, MS debuted a new Xbox Elite controller, a redesign for professional players featuring insanely customisable thumbsticks, swappable buttons, hair trigger toggles and customisable sensitivity. It will retail for $150
The conference opened with a show of strength video featuring Master Chief, Lara Croft, Marcus Fenix, and characters from Fable Legends and Forza Motorsport 6, all of which have sequels lined up to release this holiday season.
After this, Halo 5: Guardians was shown off, featuring Agent Locke’s Fireteam Osiris, complete with a serious and weary Edward Dutch (Nathan Fillion of Firefly and Castle fame). Co-op is a major part of Halo 5, and campaign gameplay was shown off in droves. New details regarding the multiplayer, Warzone, were also revealed, including the scope: 24 player Player vs player and Player vs AI gametypes. And it was playable at E3 on the showfloor.
After that, a new IP, Recore, was announced, without missing a beat. It is helmed by Keiji Inafune of Metroid prime fame and is being developed by Comcept and Armature studios.
Then Todd Howard of Bethesda showed up to announce that Fallout 4′s mods will be playable on the Xbox One free of charge. EA’s COO, Peter Moore also announced that they’re giving away Titanfall and Dragon Age Inquisition to EA Access subscribers later this year.
After this, Forza Motorsport 6 was debuted. It will run at 1080p and 60FPS, with 24 car multiplayer and will feature over 450 cars.
After this, third party multiplatform games were shown off, and then Microsoft’s indie support program, ID@Xbox was given the floor. It featured Dean Hall of DayZ announcing his next game, Ion, a spacefaring game, along with four other games cherry picked by MS to showcase.
Then Rise of the Tomb Raider’s gameplay was revealed, after which Rare announced Rare Replay, a $30 bundle of 30 classic Rare titles for it’s 30th Anniversary. Rare also revealed their new title, Sea of Thieves, a pirate adventure game coming to Xbox One and Windows 10. After this, Fable Legends was showcased with a short cinematic trailer.
Phil Spencer then took over and announced their partnership with Valve for ValveVR. “We will work with Valve to make Windows 10 the best platform for VR gaming,” he said. Then he announced that every new Oculus Rift will be bundled with an Xbox One controller as per their new partnership. then Minecraft for Hololens was shown off.
The show was wrapped up with the announcement of Gears of War Ultimate Edition, a remaster for the original Gears of War, and Gears 4 was revealed to the World. There is more to come from Microsoft on the Xbox show at Gamescom later this year, as big titles like Crackdown and Scalebound were noticably absent from E3.
For more E3 news, stay tuned to Gaming Central.
