E3 may be absent again this year, but things haven’t actually changed too much. We’re still getting big game presentations within a close time span, but they are no longer a part of E3. Theoretically, this allows companies to have a bit more control over their presentations, but the results have been somewhat questionable. It’s a chance to cut most filler content out of these shows, but I believe that the Xbox Games Showcase is the only presentation that took full advantage of this.
This is not to say that the other showcases we have seen so far are necessarily bad. There have been some interesting and exciting announcements from both this year’s PlayStation Showcase and Summer Game Fest. However, these presentations suffer from some pacing issues due to too much filler content as well as a lack of heavy hitters (and that’s not to mention Sony’s embarrassing focus on creating a live service hell). While it isn’t perfect, here’s why the Xbox Games Showcase was easily this summer’s best presentation.
Starting With a Bang
For marketing events such as these, you must have something to hook your viewers in. This is something the PlayStation Showcase utterly failed at. It’s not to say that the games shown at the beginning of that presentation necessarily look bad in any way, but it was probably a mistake not to start the show with a huge first-party reveal (a cinematic trailer for a live service game does not count). Unfortunately, PlayStation didn’t really have much to reveal in terms of standout first-party titles, but that’s another issue.
Summer Game Fest fared a bit better in this regard. Showing off Mortal Kombat 1 early on in the presentation was a smart move. However, this did expose an early sign of the show’s pacing issues. The game took up around 10 minutes of the show’s time, which isn’t an insignificant fraction. This is great if you’re a huge Mortal Kombat fan, but if you’re not as interested and are waiting to move on to the next thing, this isn’t ideal.
On the other hand, the Xbox Games Showcase started with very little nonsense. Right off the bat, we got our first in-game glimpse of the new Fable game by Playground Games. While it would be nice to see more extensive gameplay footage, the trailer did a great job of showing how the ForzaTech engine is capable of creating beautiful fantasy worlds. While people aren’t going to expect every trailer in a showcase to be exciting, it helps to have a big title like this to start off your presentation.
Pacing Is Everything
This is something of an expansion to the point of starting off your presentation well. While first impressions are important, it’s also key that you are able to engage your audience throughout your entire presentation. It can be great to give exposure to niche, smaller-budget titles, but if you spend too much time on these, many will inevitably begin to get bored. Especially when it comes to companies that produce consoles, players will want to see the big games that will sell them on hardware such as the PS5 and Series X|S.
While you want to give people a good glimpse of upcoming titles, you also want to make sure that nothing eats up too much time. This becomes a greater issue when you focus too much of a show’s attention on announcements that aren’t necessarily going to shake up the gaming industry. Take Nicolas Cage’s appearance at the Summer Game Fest presentation for example. Admittedly, it can be fun to have such a guest up on stage, but it doesn’t feel particularly relevant to the show itself. That’s why moments such as this can hurt the pacing of a show.
The Xbox Games Showcase did a great job of keeping things moving along. Perhaps not every game and announcement is going to grab everyone’s attention, but you didn’t need to wait long if something didn’t interest you. It was an incredibly smart move to separate the Starfield presentation from the rest of the Xbox presentation, as it lets viewers who are not necessarily interested in that game know to not waste their time.
The Xbox Games Showcase Was Solid for First-Party Titles
I’m not going to claim that this presentation is the best we’ve ever had for first-party titles and console-exclusive games. I would say it isn’t even close to that. However, compared to Sony’s showing this year, Xbox definitely came out on top. We got a look at several upcoming games that will be exclusive to Microsoft platforms, and some of them seem quite promising. They didn’t even need Halo this time, which is probably for the best. That series needs to take some time to heal.
As I’ve already mentioned, a trailer for Fable gave us our first peek at what that game will be like. However, in addition to this, we also got to see some trailers for other upcoming games such as Avowed, Clockwork Revolution, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Forza Motorsport, and of course, Starfield (which I will get to in a bit). All of these games are going to be exclusive to Series X|S and PC (for rigs that can run them).
Compare that to the first-party titles that Sony showed off at their presentation. Unless you’re really into live service titles, the only big current-gen games that PlayStation fans got a look at were Final Fantasy XVI and Spider-Man 2 (as well as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth if Summer Game Fest counts). Hell, even games-as-a-service titles are not necessarily a reason to buy a PS5. Bungie’s upcoming live service reimagining of Marathon is coming to Series X|S and PC in addition to PS5. Unless there’s some contract that needs to be respected, this decision doesn’t make any sense to me.
Starfield Is Truly Ambitious
While we have caught glimpses of what current-generation hardware is capable of, Starfield seems like the first game to really show what modern gaming tech can do. Of course, we still have to see if the game can live up to all the promises Bethesda is making. Unfortunately, it’s all too common to overpromise and underdeliver in this industry, and Starfield could fall victim to this. However, considering how much detail the Starfield presentation went into, we now know much more about the game, and it’s exciting.
The scope of this game is unlike most other titles on the market, and if it succeeds, it could be Xbox’s new killer app. Starfield promises truly impressive amounts of player freedom, from what you want your spaceship to look like to what background you choose for your character. While the character models may look a little bit rough, the general lighting and scale of these worlds are more than enough to make up for it. While I don’t necessarily want every big game to aim for the huge scope of Starfield, there should be more titles taking advantage of modern hardware.
Why the Xbox Games Showcase Won
I should make it clear that my intent is not to spark the rhetoric of console war debates. I understand that’s a little difficult to avoid when it comes to subjects such as these, but I have no particular horse in this race. It’s just absurd to me that we’re living in a time when Xbox can manage to pull off the most impressive big presentation of the summer. That’s not to say that there haven’t been any cool announcements and trailers at the other presentations, but Microsoft made the most out of the time it had.
On a side note, the presence of Japanese games at the show caught me a bit off-guard as well (in a good way). While it was leaked beforehand, it still feels somewhat bizarre to me to see Persona 3 Reload get officially announced at a Microsoft presentation. What makes things even weirder is that we still don’t have any official word of the game releasing on other platforms as of writing, even though it is more than likely. In addition to this, we also got to see other ATLUS titles, like Persona 5 Tactica and Metaphor: ReFantazio. It was also neat to see other Japanese titles, such as Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess.
While it wasn’t a perfect presentation, the Xbox Games Showcase was easily the strongest overall presentation we got this year. I would’ve liked to see a bit more gameplay, but I greatly appreciated the brisk pace of the event. Unfortunately, I don’t get as excited about these kinds of presentations as I used to, but this one went above my expectations. I hope this presentation can set a standard for future showcases like this.
