The ‘Inside Xbox’ stream was hyped up to the hilt, with countless tweets from Microsoft and their marketing team that it was ‘going to be breathtaking’, it was ‘going to change gaming’.
What we actually got, was a half hour video of low-quality Zoom calls and trailers that constantly said ‘May not reflect the final game’, with the hyped Assassin’s Creed Valhalla gameplay trailer, barely showing any gameplay.
Now that we have the live-stream on Thursday with promised footage of Halo Infinite’s campaign mode, fans are hoping that Microsoft will just reel back the hype a bit, and just show the games that most will be buying in the fall.
But even with that, will it be enough to move on from the nightmares of the Xbox One introduction?
HALO There
It feels longer than two months since we watched the ‘Inside Xbox’ video, but the hype for Halo Infinite feels like years now. The release of other Halo entries on PC, thanks to the Master Chief Collection, has only fanned the flames of this, and now people want to find out just what’s the deal in Master Chief’s latest game.
Halo is Microsoft’s jewel in their paper crown; a lot of this showcase depends on the reaction of what Halo Infinite will receive, as shallow as that may seem. Halo 5: Guardians had some baffling design decisions, mainly being no split-screen mode. For a Halo game, that’s not a great entry-point for someone who hears that the series has great multiplayer.
So Halo Infinite needs to impress, it needs to bring back the older fans who may have felt like the series lost its way, while showing new fans of what Halo Infinite is capable of on the Series X.
But this is only half of what the livestream needs to show. Granted, showing the campaign mode of Halo Infinite and in-game footage will be the basics of what fans will be expecting, but players want more than it to be a Halo stream.
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Console Cold War II
Microsoft have another couple of jewels in their crown, and that’s Fable, and RARE with Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie and etc. EA rescued their monotonous ‘EA Play’ stream last month with the announcement of a new Skate entry, dropping viral bombs on Twitter as if it was child’s-play.
It’s time for Microsoft to do the same. Enough with speak about the frame rates, the 4K resolutions, and enough with the OTT hype, it’s time to announce a few games that people have been hoping to see a return of.
Lets see Banjo Kazooie 3; lets see a new Perfect Dark; lets see a new Project Gotham Racing, followed by a reboot of Crazy Taxi. Fire on all the Microsoft cylinders, one after the other. Make it known that it is in-fact all about the games, and not the frame-rates.
That’s what’s going to help Microsoft in this new generation; the fact that they’re listening to what fans want for this launch, and then in the second year for the Series X, perhaps establish some new IP.
People love the image of their favourite gaming icon featuring in a new entry, on their new next-gen Xbox. That’s an alluring, tempting aspect, and it’s what can really shift the goalposts. Phil Spencer has already touted how good their backwards-compatibility features are, so lets see the brunt of this, but with some returnees in new entries.
What’s old is new again, and that’s what’s going to help turn the tide in this next-generation for Xbox.
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