Microsoft Announces Xbox Games Showcase For July 23

Awesome! Going to be a great event I'm sure!

“Games showcase”, so to be safe: assume no new hardware or pricing news on that event.

Cool. As long as I avoid catching coronavirus until this Friday I'll still be alive to see it before symptoms develop.

I hate 2020.

At Last ^__^ I’ve got to go get my green pom poms cleaned >.>

But so early @.@ ...

Xbox will have all the games this year....with better performance. 🙌

@KratosMD I’m not sure if there will be a lot of “unexpected” announcements that are considered big hitters (though I hope so). I think his confidence just comes from the fact that even if they show what is expected (including fable and perfect dark at this point) from all their studios, then that is still a great showcase. Even just showing expected would include Hellblade 2, Halo, Fable, Perfect Dark, Forza, Psychonauts 2, Sea if thieves and gears 5 updates for series x, flight sim, Everwild, plus all the other studios that could show off projects (at some point we will see State of Decay 3 and Outer Wilds 2).

I’m definitely with you in the optimism though! Just trying to temper expectations to what I am confident is there.

C'mon Xbox, Bring the heat this time..

@Medic_Alert F 🦄s and their “timed exclusives” PC games all they have to show for this year is Spiderman DLC. Gamepass already crossed 10m+ long ago in jus two years and new gamers are constantly coming. Only Halo Infinite with 500m+ development budget has way bigger and richer universe than all those titles you mentioned combined. Just wait for Hellblade 2 ...Fable is already rumoured to have photorealistic open world handcrafted non procedural graphics with great story. Also we already know Flight Simulator is already a technological marvel with real time weather 2 Petabyte map size.

@Medic_Alert If you have a bigger platform, you will automatically have bigger “audiences” for big titles by their new studios. The Initiative has already got some industry’s big guns working on a AAAA title. After July the hypocrite double standard fangirls need a new narrative altogether or else they should go play their 98% animated timed exclusive titles and DLCs that run at 30fps and suffer frame drops during world transitions seriously.

@Medic_Alert I mean I see where you are coming from. But first thing I said was “great showcase” not “will pull Sony gamers”. To be fair the comment I replied to references Sony so I’ll give you credit there.

However I really believe that the variety and effort is coming out strong with MS and people who disregard all of those game and series (and who will choose to disregard new announcements also) will never turn away from Sony anyway. Those are the same people who have been saying that “Xbox isn’t making anything new. Just Gears, Forza, and Halo” as they disregard series like Ori, Sea of thieves (huge player base), State of Decay, multiple purchases studios, and soon to come Everwild, and Grounded. Not every game may be a gem, and not every game is for everyone, but there has been a major investment in variety with an injection of money to increase visual quality. People who will ignore 15 studios worth of crafted content and disregard all of it as not worth it, will never be appeased in my opinion.

And that’s fine. People are allowed to like and dislike what they want. I’ll be over here loving some games (Sea of Thieves and State of Decay) not liking others (Bleeding Edge) and just enjoying the increased stream of content coming my way in gamepass. And regardless of if 100 million people are doing the same or I’m the only one, I’m gonna love it.

@Medic_Alert Most of the single player story mode one and done titles you mentioned doesn’t even have a rich storyline that will have a core fanbase except the 🦄s. Xbox is already making lot of pro consumer moves past few years - XSX will launch with thousands of enhanced titles day 1. You guys wanted gameplay, they are giving away free 70+ demoes for upcoming titles to play with. All you hypocrites get on the other side are GTAV patches and few seconds of Spiderman DLC teasers lol.

@xMightyMatt14x Wait and watch how 100m+ of 🦄s get abandoned by their lord and force them to pay for their games again for new console making an anti-consumer move and still get praised by these hypocrites and vulture media.

Great, at least now we have a date so all rumours about when/if/but and maybe are off... It's now just a case of waiting... 🤣

This comment section is off to a great start.

Anyhow, I hope I'll be able to catch it live, otherwise I catch up with it afterwards.

@Medic_Alert that’s fair. I do agree about the minimalist release for SOT and such hurting initial reception. And I do get you. Just from experience with my friends who would consider themselves Sony guys, there’s almost nothing realistically that ms could show that will pull them away, even if, say, the Initiative was making a super AAAA new Ip that looked intriguing alongside Ninja Theoryls Hellblade 2, and Halo Infinite looked awesome, and Forza showed itself beautifully, my friends would still have some excuse for why every Sony game is still more worth it than any of those.

I just think by this point in gaming the fanboy crowds who watch these things are locked already. They know the main system they will get regardless (myself included). It’s the other 80% of gamers ms wants to try to get a piece of. And I feel like that crowd respects games but also considers other factors more, like price, online experience, and what their friends have. Last time around Sony’s exclusive launch lineup and even first year and a half was... not great and MS had new and interesting game’s that, love them or hate them, garnered attention. Like Titanfall. Still what mattered more was price and the fact that everyone was playing COD on PS.

@Medic_Alert My thoughts exactly.

Very excited. Looking forward to what's in store. Also its a Thursday. Woo hoo! I'm off work so I can watch it!

Knowing Microsoft, they'll probably upload all of their big reveals on xbox.com a couple of days before the event.

Still, with two and half weeks to go, they need to really start ramping up the hype for this. Phil Spencer's comments recently have certainly got the ball rolling, and they need to continue that effort to make this the only thing players are talking about right now, to show those who aren't in the know - and maybe still have a sour taste in their mouths after the Xbox One reveal fiasco (Digital Foundry recently looked back on the infamous event in a DF Retro episode) - that Xbox is coming back in a big way.

Good news is that after Sony's decent showing I'm expecting a big response back from Microsoft as it's needed...
This should be interesting!!

To be honest, I don't want spoilers. I just want to watch the show and see some Series X games and I'm sure that at least one is going to be an outstanding reveal, something like Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark or Fable. If only the three were revealed but one would do. Please, Bajo-Kazooie, come on! We need something not serious and that would attract more gamers and Nintendo fans.

@Medic_Alert I think that the potential of Fable is absolutely huge. I wouldn't underestimate it. Sony has a few open-world franchises, Spiderman and Horizon and Naughty Dog's narrative games. Microsoft has many new studios that seem to cover all genres plus at least two AAAA games, Halo Infinite (even if it's staple Xbox, Xbox One only got one and with a harshly criticised campaign) and The Initiative game.

"People who disregard all of those game and series (and who will choose to disregard new announcements also) will never turn away from Sony anyway. Those are the same people who have been saying that “Xbox isn’t making anything new. Just Gears, Forza, and Halo” as they disregard series like Ori, Sea of thieves (huge player base), State of Decay, multiple purchases studios, and soon to come Everwild, and Grounded".

That is true, simple-minded fanboys will repeat the "Xbox only has Halo, Gears and Forza" mantra until they die but they will be proved wrong.

@xMightyMatt14x I agree. Series X can have the best game ever and yet they wouldn't even want to try it but, as you said, most gamers are not firmly attached to a brand. Only 13 million people bought the Wii U, that's how many unwavering Nintendo fans are in the world, before knowing it would be abandoned and replaced by Switch and Xbox 360 was more successful commercially during last generation than PS3 until Sony caught up during current generation with cheap hardware revisions. Even Xbox One after its troubled launch and overwhelmed by PS4 hardware sales has had a decent run on the charts and record-breaking subscribers.

@Medic_Alert Yes, around 38 million people that bought an Xbox 360 didn't buy an Xbox One. I also see potential buyers in the Nintendo crowd. For instance, I jumped to Xbox this generation and Series X looks more appealing than Xbox One.

@Medic_Alert "I don't know why Halo is being described as AAAA. Firstly it means nothing. "

What does AAA mean? None of it means anything, its just marketing trying to generate hype. That said I don't think anyone has called Halo a "AAAA". That line has been going on about some unannounced new projects.

Anyways, never judge the potential of any franchise based on the past, especially when a reboot is in line. I mean, look at Tomb Raider this gen, it was considered one of the "must play" games of this generation despite having been a laughing stock since the third classic entry.

Anyways, as far as loyalties go, I think Microsoft has held a healthy lifeline despite its terrible launch. I think that the XBox base is already 90% drained down to its loyalist base, that is not going nowhere. This is me saying: they basically have nowhere to go but up.

Sony picked up a lot of disgruntled xbox fans at the start of the last gen, me one of them. I'm very likely getting a PS5 eventually, but just like XBox this gen, it wont likely happen until 3 years in (unless someone gifts me one) because all i will play on that machine will be exclusives, and all they will have at launch is a 1.5 game.

Mind you: this week is critical for Microsoft. They got to get that issue with missing games, like, yesterday, and I don't care yesterday was Sunday.

@Medic_Alert Fable was never a multimillion selling series that set charts alight. It sold well tho. I think this is more Microsoft bringing back a series that they know won't sell 10 million copies, but will sell well enough that they make money and, equally important, that they earn a lot of good will with gamers.

As for those 3 series you mentioned, yes they are good (tho I don't like forza as I don't play racing games), but Microsoft have rested on them for too long. That's something Phil Spencer has, to his credit, tried to address.

I'm not sure people will be willing to change consoles tho. Sony have always been strong, Microsofts best gen was Sony's worst, and a lot of people have gotten heavily involved in a consoles ecosystem. Much more so than last gen I think, as digital gaming has gotten more and more prevalent.

Personally, I see PS5 winning next gen by a large amount. But that's not to say Microsoft won't be successful, they will be.

@Tharsman In my opinion, As are for the budget so A are for indie games, AA are for games like second-party Nintendo games and expensive indie/independent games, AAA for games like Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty and AAAA for super expensive games like Halo Infinite ($500 million, rumoured) or The Initiative's big game. I don't think it makes sense to use As for quality (of games).

@BlueOcean As far as I have been able to observe, MS is only claiming their "The Initiative" studio (and maybe one other) to be working on such-called AAAA games. And apparently they are doing it at the same time they state they are meant to compete with the rare PS4 gems as TLOU2 and God of War, so, it seems MS is also calling those titles AAAA by proxy.

That is odd, because those are "One Game the Whole Gen" out of those teams (yea, Nuaghty Dog has multiple teams, before we get into Uncharted 4 also coming out of Naughty Dog this gen.) Does this mean that The Initiative will only be expected to release its game 3 years from now, and nothing else from there until 6-7 years later? Or they somehow feel they can deliver that same quality in way shorter dev cycles?

@Tharsman Who knows but look at what Ubisoft can do in a short time: Origins and Odyssey. It all depends on how many workers they have and how well organised their teams are. Crystal Dynamics is also top-quality and make super polished games these days, more than Naughty Dog that can often do rough gameplay and daft camera. I can't talk about the new Xbox Game Studios but we'll find out.

For the record, I didn't know about the rumoured Halo Infinite's infinite budget until today.

@BlueOcean

Unity was developed by Ubisoft Montreal
Syndicate was developed by Ubisoft Quebec
Origins was developed by Montreal
Odyssey by Quebec
Valhalla is being done by Montreal

Basically, Ubisoft tends to have 2 or 3 studios working on Assassins Creed games so they can do their every-other-year release schedule. Rogue was an oddball developed by Ubisoft Sofia, but for the most part, Montreal makes the core change entry, Quebec expands on it with a followup iterative entry that is mostly "bigger" but not much more innovative.

Still, Montreal did deliver 3 games this gen (Black Flag, Unity, Origins) and are now still within this gen delivering Valhalla.

Now, I say this as a huge Assassins Creed fan that buys every entry (usually on multiple platforms,) those games quality are nowhere near as high as the God of War or The Last of Us.

Quality be damned, though. I'll play each AC entry 4 times before playing TLOU a second time... (not saying I'll never do that, just that I litterally have played every entry about 4 times already but my second TLOU wont happen until I'm ready to play it back to back with TLOU2 on a PS5... 3 years from now?)

@Tharsman Yes, that's what I said, to have several studios and well organised teams. I only played TLoU once and I don't want to play it again. I don't think I need to play the sequel. I'll probably re-play Uncharted 4, though. But are Naughty Dog's games really that high-quality? Tomb Raider games have better visuals, better gameplay, better camera and Naughty Dog's games have more professional motion capture and voice acting and perhaps better stories. So, as interactive pieces, they're better but as games, I don't think so. I only started playing Assassin's Creed this generation (last generation I was Nintendo-only) and I love it. Also, Breath of the Wild suddenly felt like a boring and empty Assassin's Creed-like game.

I see this comment section blew up quickly, while I was at work...lol. I refrain from arguing in here. 😂

I am just upset they waited too long to announce the date, so now I can’t take day off work!! Lol.

@Z3u5000

I like the way you think. 👍🏻

@BlueOcean

Don’t you love how every positive Xbox article here gets all the PlayStation guys in here trying to nitpick and complain?

With those “great PS exclusives” they constantly yammer on about, you’d think they would have better things to do? I guess not. 😂

@KelticDevil I ignored SuperNintendoMii because he always addressed me even when not talking to him and he called me jerk. I reported him but I don't know if it does anything. That guy is a good example.

One of the funny things they say these days is that PS5 SSD "zero-loading times" will make games impossible to run on Series X and PC and that the fewer CUs of PS5 makes for a GPU advantage compared to Series X. In that case, Lockhart/Series S is going to have the best next-gen GPU! Also, that the variable but not sustainable peak clocks of PS5 CPU and GPU will make development easier on PS5. I mean, every absurd thing you can imagine has been said about PS5 already. When PS4 launched, they said very different things 😁.

Yes I'm pretty damn excited actually. Looking forward to seeing what they've got lined-up.

@BlueOcean

Exactly.

@BlueOcean @KelticDevil I appreciate you guys so you know. It’s nice to be able to express thoughts and perspectives knowing I’m not alone on these things. I really enjoy the Xbox ecosystem and it’s nice to find other people who do as well that are rational online.

@BlueOcean I do am looking forward to play TLOU2, but I know I’m not likely to play it again for maybe 10 years, and I still am guessing Sony will try to sell us a PS5 enhanced edition next year. If I’m going to play it, I might as well wait for that to come out and go down in price.

I understand it not being for everyone, but I’m a sucker for narrative heavy games, and the sadder the story, the more I’ll like it. But at the same time I like my fun dynasty warrior-like mindless games, it’s all about mood that day.

@xMightyMatt14x

I hear ya man. I am so glad this website came back so us Xbox fans have somewhere to go for news & chat about everything Xbox.

Glad to have you here!! 👍🏻

@xMightyMatt14x I'm happy to hear that. It's great to have you here ☺️.

Im kinda hyped, let the battle begin!!
Playstation vs Xbox.
One game is needed to convince me microsoft! Just one haha. Killer instinct.

I am cautiously optimistic.