finally some BC news again. Somehow I totally forgot about them, but after checking, the last BC additions was Hitman HD Trilogy one month ago. Was also hoping to see a few 4k updates for 360 games on the conference.


Started a few of the new Game Pass games:

Bridge Constructor Portal - really good. Improved quite a bit over the last Bridge Constructor game. It's now far more trouble free to build a bridge, the Portal humor is there and the Portal gameplay elements change it up a little. Also it's my 600th Xbox One game I played according to TA.

Guacamelee 2 - great as expected. Not too far into the game but everything feels right.

Supermarket Shriek - surprisingly fun. I thought the gameplay stuff they showed during previous conferences (including this E3) make it seem like a shitty indie game but it's actually pretty decent. Not brilliant by any means but enjoyable enough.

Shenmue 2 - boy this game aged poorly. Barely remember anything when I played it on the original Xbox. This is nothing but a straight port with a higher resolution. Not even the cutscenes are full screen. Graphically ugly, voice overs have a terrible audio quality and the controls are pretty poor. I hesitate to start the first Shenmue...

Old Man's Journey - Only started it for the easy Gamerscore but I've played worse, much worse.

A few strong titles for me in the last batch of BC games with Infinite Undiscovery, Too Human, Enchanted Arms, Enslaved and Star Ocean are great and sitting on my shelf already.

Damn SoT has had some pretty good growth. 3.4 million new players in a year is really good.

It’s for the best that Forza doesn’t stick the one entry every 2 years for next gen, the series has been stagnant because of this imo.

Playground, Inxile, Obsidian, DoubleFine and Ninja Theory are perfect for game pass because they are multi team studios, maybe Rare can be too depending on what type of project they take on.

This is why Platinum would be invaluable for MS they literally a release a AAA game every year I feel like they should be a priority and really try to make this happen. Dontnod and Remedy (now that they have two teams) would be great fits as well even if they are unlikely, I would even add Avalanche too but they are already owned by another company.

I really wish that Grasshopper Manufacture didn’t go the way they did, their output last gen would have been great for gamepass too. I was also a fan of their games even if they are not perfect No More Heroes 1 & 2, Lolipop Chainsaw, Shadows of the Damned, Killer is Dead.

They were reportedly in talks with multiple studios probably even at the same time, DoubleFine is probably the only one that they were able to close deal before E3. Personally I don’t think that they are slowing down and I don’t think that they should either with Sony now officially announcing that they are going to expand. It’s currently 12 vs 15 although I’m not saying anything crazy like they should go for 20 plus.

Actually with how many multiple team studios Xbox now has they are already at 20+ development teams which compared to a year ago they were sitting at like 5 studios with 5 teams. Most people don't fully see how much of an increase it really is when you count it on a per development team basis instead of per studio.

Platinum Games plz, Grounding is a very realistic option imo.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-06-11-i-would-be-nice-to-buy-a-japanese-studio-phil-spencer?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Some info on Bleeding Edge from Era.

Talked to a couple of the Bleeding Edge devs at Fanfest and got some details you guys might like.

-They only had 10-20 people on the project for most of development. That number jumped to 30 as they got closer to launching the Alpha. He said they have a ton of other projects in the works.

-Launching with ten characters across three classes. He was pretty cagey on support, but said they were open to adding characters and maps after launch, but for now they’re focused on balancing and getting the ten characters perfect.

-No word on release date other than they’re going to focus on the alpha and how feedback goes will dictate full release. I compared it to the early alpha stuff with Sea of Thieves and he said exactly.

-They wouldn’t comment on cosmetics, but they gave us a “fast pass” alpha access and the card mentions the code includes an exclusive hoverboard. Every character has a hoverboard, but they vary a bit from character to character based on design. I’m not sure how the board cosmetics will work, but I think it’s safe to assume there’ll be cosmetics.

-The game is not based on Project Razer, but is instead based on prototyping they did after doing DmC, imaging what a multiplayer version of that game might be.

-Like DMC, you can knock enemies into the air and attack them in air as part of combos, but they toned it down a ton, because during development, it was really frustrating when you were getting battered in the air for thirty seconds.

-There’s a ton of combos in the game and each character has two choices of ultimates, committing to one at the beginning of the match.

- I asked what games on the market they thought would be competitors. They said Overwatch, obviously. They also said they weirdly thought it might attract MOBA fans. It’s got a ton more action, obviously, but the way the abilities regenerate and the emphasis on tactics (I’ll touch more on this later.) might sway people who are getting a bit tired with traditional MOBAs.

I got to play a tutorial of the game and extended demo and it greatly exceeded my expectations. I thought it was a really nice mix of precision and arcade while looking really nice and committing to the style.

It is very heavy on strategy. The maps are designed with lanes like a MOBA and the abilities regenerate on a timer. The characters are pretty different. I played the same character the whole time to really do a bit of a deep dive. For example, most characters dodge with RT, but my character changed stances with RT. He had two stances, one focused on speed that made him faster and one focused on healing that regenerated health faster. One of my abilities was also dependent on which stance I was in. We got wiped at one point and the developer on our team basically told us to wait for everyone to respawn, because it would be impossible to go 1 vs. 4. It’s absolutely a team game.