7/10
Pros:
- Forza Horizon Lego expansion is incredible and creative
- Cyberpunk 2077 with KEANU FUCKING REEVES out of nowhere
- Double Fine acquisition is yet another great new studio for them and shows more first party growth
- Game Pass is insane value
- Ori and the Will of the Wisps looks incredible
- Minecraft Dungeons is really cute and could be fun
- Elden Ring trailer was hype
- Phantasy Star Online 2 being brought to the west for the first time
- Flight Simulator being brought back
- Tons of variety of different games, probably the most i've seen from Microsoft
Neutral:
- Bleeding Edge... cool a new IP and it looked alright I guess, but the announcement with no actual gameplay after the trailer to show was weird af and lackluster. I love Ninja Theory tho so i'll def check it out regardless, and at least the alpha is really soon
- Battletoads! but i'm not sure how I feel about the art style they chose.... also still no release date at all?
- Halo Infinite trailer was good but once again no gameplay
Cons:
- Both of those Gears 5 trailers (and basically the entire Gears segment )were legitimately some of the worst trailers I have seen in ages and if anything made me less interested than I was before, good lord
- Wasteland 3 trailer was awful as well imo and did nothing to make the game look interesting to me
- Ending it with yet another boring as shit "people talk about the new hardware instead of showing anything" like they did back with Scorpio in 2017
- Too many trailers that had either no gameplay or hardly any
It's such a weird reverse where I feel like last year gave so much confidence for Xbox's First Party games after all the new acquisitions and announcements, but this year I feel like most of them completely fell flat. The entire Gears 5 segment was absolutely dreadful, Wasteland 3's trailer was awful as well imo, Battletoads art style i'm not sure if I like or not yet. Then both Halo Infinite and Bleeding Edge didn't even get any live gameplay shown (which is especially weird for a new IP like Bleeding Edge, but at least there's an alpha test in a few weeks).
The stuff they DID show and announce though like Ori, Forza Horizon 4's Lego Expansion, Minecraft Dungeons, and even Flight Simulator which I have no interest in all looked really good so it's just so jarring that they would advertise something like Gears 5 that way, which is a big game for them this year.
The 3rd party announcements were really good too but overall I honestly think the conference ultimately suffered from having too many trailers with no gameplay at all, especially first party.
I honestly think (or hope at least) that they were just holding a lot of the major stuff back for next E3 when the focus moves directly towards next-gen, because that would explain why it was a letdown this year compared to last.
Last edited by FloatingWaffles - on 09 June 2019
