The MS event was pretty much what I expected. It was a great promo for Game Pass and if it wasn't for the next gen consoles coming out, I think MS would have nailed it. However, since the next gen consoles ARE coming out, it completely backfired on them.
Like I've been saying for months, GP, Smart Delivery and 4k/120fps all sound great, until people see the games. With next gen around the corner we all want to be wow'ed and see new and exciting stuff, which is hard when you're making games that have to run on Xbox One and the average gaming pc too. That's why they had to use a lot of cgi smoke and mirrors and basically show nothing at all, while also making the Hell Blade 2 footage a lot less believable.
MS has been pretty open about their strategy but somehow people were still disappointed, probably because they had too much faith in the stuff Phil's been telling us about scalability. Halo was supposed to make a strong case for that, but at least now we know for sure. What surprised me the most about the Halo footage is why they didn't show a more exciting slice of gameplay or at least a nicely edited story trailer. Its like they just recorded 8 minutes of random gameplay and now they are telling us it was an old build... So let me get this straight. They spend 5 years and $500m on their biggest flag ship title. Build arguably the most important event in Xbox history around the Halo reveal, and then they accidentally show us an old build and a generic clip of random gameplay? It just doesn't make sense lol.
Sony also hasn't showed us a whole lot, but the difference is their proven track record. We know exactly what to expect from their 1st party studios and we know Sony is doing a full generational reset. It only makes sense that they will do a full gameplay reveal of HZW, Spider Man and probably throw a GOW2 in there in August. All games that were specifically designed for the ps5 and will likely have jaws dropping the floor on a global scale. After MS showing, I just don't see them coming back from that.
That being said, we all know MS isn't about selling Xboxes next gen and they will probably do great as a service. For better or worse, I bet most of their ip's will be turned into GAAS or episodic titles to keep people engaged with GP.
