Poll: How Would You Grade The Xbox Games Showcase Extended 2022?

Love it! Great pacing and gray interviews. And a few surprises

Loved seeing more of Hot Wheels and can’t wait for it. And that Stalker team profile was really moving.

I definitely liked it, wasn't boring at all, good pacing some surprises, loved the high on life part, and humbled by stalker developer issues

I feel they delivered what they said they were going to.

I'm not sad I missed it, deeper look at As Dusk Falls and Pentiment was decent. E overall

I can't speak for anyone else, but personally at this point in their respective life cycles the Series X and PS5 are offering BY FAR the least overall value in terms of investment to games available that I'm interested in playing of any console generation to date. And I can't recall a June whose premier showcases have come and gone with so few games I remotely care about trying. I say this as an avid hobbyist since the Atari 2600 who's owned pretty much every major platform along with thousands of games of every genre.

There are at least a couple of key reasons why I believe this to be the case. First, the industry has been putting too many eggs into too few baskets for years now. At E3 2010 a Japanese developer remarked, "You Americans must really enjoy war," with regard to the glut of FPSes at the show. Shortly afterward most Japanese, foreign, and smaller studios stopped bothering to attend, as the cost wasn't justified being relegated to obscurity on the show floor while the mega-publishers dominated media attention every single year with the latest "Call of Battlefield: Madden's Creed". Ditto zombie apocalypse games, battle royales, and so on; everything increasingly looked and played like everything else. COVID didn't kill E3; it was dying long before that. But as both Sony and Microsoft's showcases, filled with derivative tropes and a hugely disproportionate emphasis on darkness, horror, and ultra-violence demonstrated, the industry hasn't learned much at all about why genuine variety in theme and genre are important.

The other reason is twofold. First-party "AAA" games have become so big, complicated, and expensive to make, often involving hundreds of people or more, that development times have reached absurd proportions. Announcements are made two, three, or more years before actual releases, so from a gamer's standpoint the focus is always next year or sometime in the future rather than having games to enjoy right now. It took both Series X and the PS5 a FULL YEAR to see a true flagship IP release (Halo Infinite and Horizon: Forbidden West); the pace of major, must-have releases has became glacial in comparison to previous system launches. And when some of these "epic" titles finally do reach players' hands, all too often they've still been rushed and/or had huge swaths of features left on the cutting room floor (example: Halo Infinite). Even worse, bugs and glitches have become the norm for most launches, the developers treating $60 and $70 nonrefundable purchases as glorified betas.

Filling out showcases with Indie games is just that: filler probably 97% of the time. There are some very good, high quality Indie games out there, but most simply don't have the production values or content necessary to plug the gaping holes left by the major studios on the release calendar.

Overall I think the industry is in serious need of a thorough re-evaluation of its approach. The most powerful hardware in the world is just a glorified doorstop collecting dust without GAMES that a given user wants to play. Again I can't speak for anyone else, but having read over a lot of comments since these presentations I suspect that there are others out there who are at least beginning to feel similarly about the state of the hobby.

If they had just said it was going to be deep dives of games we had already seen on Sunday, I would have been more forgiving, but they also said it would include new trailers when they first announced this. It wasn't until right before the show that Aaron said it would just be deep dives and that's basically it.

I'll say it again, but it's still disappointing that none of their other major 1st party exclusives made an appearance when they had a total of 3 hours worth of shows. There's no reason why Hellblade 2 or Avowed wouldn't be far enough along to be able to show some gameplay. They could have used this show to show a bit of them off along with the deep dives.

The format is good with doing the big show and then have deep dives follow, but when 90% of their upcoming catalog is sitting in limbo while they show off timed exclusives and indie games for the most part (including the deep dives this time), it's not hard to be disappointed. I gave this one an E, which is roughly what I would have graded Sunday's show (maybe a D just because it was mostly all gameplay, even if it was for mostly games that I could care less about).

@AtlanteanMan a good breakdown of how the industry needs a shake up. In a time of coming of Covid, the terrible War and the global recession where all heading for, it would be nice to have some games that are fun, and a bit more exprimental. The constant glut of FPS and rogue like indies, and the batlle royal influx that targets the multiplayer groups that moved over from phone gaming just does not excite .
But it seems that all the big three will not really take a gamble anymore. The only thing I'm glad about is the fact I held of getting into the next gen, and still use my WiiU , Xbox One, PS3 for my normal gaming.
Nothing out there to make me part with the cash for a Xbox Series X or PS5 at the moment.

As far as the extended showcase concerned, I thought it was OK, A couple of trailers for games I did not notice in the other show. which was nice.
I thought the best part was the way the Flight Simulator update info was done with the tour of the Smithonian Museum,.
The Bethesda part was pretty boring for me.
Grounded looks fun, I played the beta and found it quite fun for a bit.
The game I really dont like the look of is that Dusk to falls or whatever it's called. What a horrible graphic engine, Why would I want to watch that, they talk about it how it deals with mature scenarios in real life, then put a graphics engine like a comic but worse, reminds me of the old video based filmation games everyone made when the CD era hit, like all those Mega CD, Phillips CDI games.

Have they not played Life is Strange series , now thats how you do a mature style of game.
I gave it a B as the Flight simulator section was good and the dev is so passionette about the Simulator. Plus Grounded looks like it will be a blast in its full version.
And not forgetting the surport and showcase for Ukraine I thought the Bond Woman was gonna lose it at one point.
She held it together though.

I thought the extended showcase was good. Enjoyed the deep dives into the games.

I wish we got to saw more 1st party games but I think a lot of gamers really need to understand they need to show the games when they are READY. Devs, of you are reading this, take the time you need to deliever great gaming experiences. We don't want another cyberpunk. Not all of us are trying to have you rush a unfinished product out

Rant over.

I ranked it C, saw the warning saying everything was revealed in Sunday's showcase and then they surprise give an update on a few games not in Sunday's showcase. I do feel that the main thing that prevented it from being better is the fact that Sunday's showcase was very disappointing.