Microsoft's E3 Conference Review and Wrap Up

Microsoft’s E3 conference started off with a big Halo bang. A single player and multiplayer trailer kicked off the show, demonstrating an emphasis on quality and player experience. After 343’s Master Chief collection debacle it only makes sense that they’d be focusing so heavily on stable and accessible game play.

Microsoft’s first new IP, Recore, had a teaser trailer that demonstrated what kind of game the players should expect. Recore is made by Inafune, the mega man co-designer. Recore seems like it will be following a female lead protagonist as she collects core’s and places them in robots to help her fight, and potentially solve different types of puzzles. The game focuses on battling against red cored robots with your blue cored robots.

Next, a huge announcement from Microsoft is the new backwards compatibility of the Xbox One. Starting this holiday season for all players, and earlier for members of Game Preview, backwards capability will include over 1000 titles including Mass Effect and Rainbow Six Vegas.

The new Xbox “Elite” controller took the stage, designed for elite gamers on the Xbox One. New features of the controller include: four interchangeable paddles on the back, hair trigger locks for shooter precision, button remapping, and swappable components. The Elite Controller his retail in October at the price of $149.99.

Longtime partners of Microsoft, Bethesda took the stage to demonstrate even more Fallout 4. Specifically, Todd Howard wanted to emphasize that mods made for Fallout 4 on PC will be usable on the Xbox One version of the game.

The second big company at Microsoft’s conference was EA who demonstrated new games and features coming to EA access including Titanfall this week and Dragon Age Inquisition later this year. The big selling point for EA access is the ability to play some of Ea’s newest games before release. EA access will be free to Xbox One Gold members this week.

For its first appearance at E3, Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 showed off a trailer, and gameplay later at the EA showcase. Some unique playable classes, new missions, and new drops will be available in the new game.

Forza Motorsports 6 was announced for a September 15^th release, with 26 tracks and hundreds of cars, Forza looks to celebrate its 50^th anniversary with a bang.

In Big News Bandai Namco showed off a Dark Souls 3 trailer at the Microsoft conference. The new Dark Souls seems to see the return of the Giants to the world. Fans of the series will recognize the giants the invading force of Drangliec, and the originators of the boss souls.

Laurent Detoc, president of Ubisoft, hit the stage to show off all of the brand new Tom Clancy game line up including The Division and Rainbow Six Siege. The Division is an MMO shooter for consoles, where players travel through a post-apocalyptic New York stuck in a perpetual black Friday/ Christmas season. Rainbow Six Siege, due out later this year, is a squad based player vs player shooter that focuses on the utter destruction of environments. Siege will also include backward compatible copies of Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2 for the Xbox One.

Independent developers and games took up a huge part of the Microsoft conference, over a dozen independent exclusives were shown at the Microsoft conference with brief 1-2 second clips of each. The three biggest indie games shown were ION, Tacoma, and Cuphead.

Timed Exclusive, Rise of the Tomb Raider, had a massive gameplay demo. Showing cinematic and gameplay features, the trailer showed Lara Croft scaling an ice covered mountain, surviving avalanches, long jumps, and a massive Storm. The rest of the trailer showed brief glimpses of what players can expect from the game, demonstrating the diversity in environments and hinting at some supernatural elements of the game.

Rare fans rejoiced as Rare announced the release of “Rare Replay,” a collection of the 30 best rare games available to play on Xbox One. Rare Replay includes favorite titles like Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, and Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

Rare wasn’t only announcing the re-release of its old games, but also a brand new IP titled “Sea of Thieves.” Sea of Thieves is a pirate-focused MMO. Playing with other players, you will create a crew and battle for control of the seas against other pirate factions. Players will also battle supernatural forces as they hunt for new lands and treasure.

There was a brief focus on the free-to-play asymmetric 4v1 game, Fable Legends, which is still playable across Window 10 platforms.

Microsoft then made a huge announcement that they were pairing with valve to work on Virtual Reality technology, and then quickly moved on to oculus, and even more quickly onto the Microsoft Hololens. Microsoft officially announced its Minecraft as an amazing app for gamers on the hololens. Gamers across platforms will be able to play in the same world as a player using the hololens. Hololens players will have god-like abilities, like the ability to control the weather, and see areas not yet accessed by players playing normally.

The last major title to hit the Microsoft was from the Gears of War team, announcing an HD rerelease of the original Gears of War, and a Gears 4, a brand new game in the series. The demo for Gears 4 was incredibly dark, which made the graphics and the game play really hard to see. However, the game did look really fun, and presumably it won’t be pitch black the entire time.

For more E3 news during the event you can follow me on Twitter @forgedinflames or stay here for the Sony E3 summary and wrap up report!