Microsoft E3 2013 Press Conference round up

Microsoft E3 2013 Press Conference round up

Microsoft is of course one of the biggest names in entertainment with one of the best selling consoles out there that people are still purchasing to this day. Well with the Xbox One's release on the horizon they of course needed some great games to gather in the first time buyers, did they do good enough to compete with Sony?

To start off we were shown some stunning in-game footage of Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain showing off the advanced stealth system, real-time weather, variety of transport and many more additions to the upcoming tale in Snake's story. They also showed what I'd like to think of as the best horse I've seen in a game to date, plus with the addition of stealthing while riding a horse is amazing.

To accompany MGSV at the start of the show Hideo Kojima himself came on stage to briefly talk, but it was nice of him to pop along, and of course have his trailer to start off the conference. There was then a brief mention of upcoming Xbox 360 titles to show that they haven't forgotten about the current generation, and to start that all off a new version of the Xbox 360 was announced.

The new Xbox 360 features a sleek and stylish design similar to the upcoming Xbox One creating a distinct look across all of Microsoft's consoles. The new design will be available in a 4GB ($199), 250GB ($299) and a 4GB Kinect bundle ($299) and will be available in stores very soon. The announce of the console was also followed by a few changes to Xbox Live which you can read in full here.

Along with the redesigned console there were a couple of games to go alongside it's announcement that included World of Tanks making it's debut on console. Similar to the PC version it will be free-to-play still, but will be only playable on Xbox Live which requires a Gold subscription. Max: The Curse of Brotherhood was also announced which looks like a great evolution of the Max and the Magic Marker series. We can only presume that you can control the marker with Kinect, plus it now appears to be more of an actual platformer, instead of being mainly puzzle-centric, meaning not only has it improved visually, but so has the gameplay.

Without anymore mentions of current gen, Microsoft went onto their main portion of the show where they started by showing off a trailer for Dark Souls II, however it wasn't until after this that they were starting with their exclusive titles which had a fairly broad mixture of games. Sadly they missed out on showing games for a younger audience, mainly focusing on the gun loving players out there. With that said though I'm quite content with what Microsoft announced and can imagine there'll be more on the horizon to bring in a wider range of games.

To start off with there was Ryse: Son of Rome, which was previously announced two E3's ago as a Kinect title, although it has obviously since developed. From the gameplay show in the demo the combat looked a bit repetitive, however relaying commands seemed a little more entertaining, I think to be impressed by Ryse I'll need to see a bit more on the game before having an opinion. Following Ryse was a completely unexpected announcement which was the re-creating of Killer Instinct and seemingly revamping it so it could sit alongside the current generation of fighters.

A favourite announcement of min was that Insomniac Games are teaming up with Microsoft to create a new multiplayer shooter that hopefully will keep the visual style of the trailer below, or potentially evolve even more.

Sunset Overdrive is a third person open world shooter which promises to be massively influenced by the community that plays it, making it an always changing world full of stunning environments and crazy weapons. As you can see from the trailer above the game is super fast paced and driven by traversal, the interesting addition for me is the skyhook like gameplay which I imagine in an open world environment will work amazingly well.

Forza Motorsport V seemed to have a little something up it's sleeves by announcing the Drivatar, an almost human AI system that tracks how you play; how you take corners, how you try to pass other cars etc and learns in precise detail how you carry out these actions. This is so that when you go to work or just go to sleep, your Drivatar will be playing for you, playing against your friends and the computer to earn you points. All a little creepy but you can then play your Drivatar to try and better yourself in races.

Following on from Forza, Minecraft Xbox One edition was announced, to just be bigger and better than the Xbox 360 edition of Minecraft, no doubt making fans happy that they'll be able to still play Minecraft on their new console but of course with updated features, instead of forcing you to pay for the game again. Next up we were very lucky to have Sam Lake come on stage to talk a little about Quantum Break and show off a trailer featuring game footage. Stating that the game blurs the line between gaming and TV but having your actions in the game, affect the TV show for you when you watch it, meaning your experience may be different to your friends. The trailer is still a little confusing to what you do in the game, however I'm sure Remedy won' disappoint me, as they haven't done so before.

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