Roundup: All The Key Xbox Announcements From Today (June 9)

Man, this on top of the showcase Sunday..? Very cool, Microsoft.

Very clever getting all this out of the way before the show on Sunday. Now the show can be about the games and nothing else.

The Samsung tv is a good Cloud Gaming one.
They need to get into LG as well.

The issue for me is advertising. Outside of this website and a few gamers I know, not many know about game pass, my work colleagues and whole family and main friends circle have not a clue about it and what it offers.
They know Xbox but gamepass and cloud not a clue, bless ‘em 😂

I’m a little surprised they didn’t announce a family plan for Game Pass. Nonetheless, this is a really good start to the week for them - and now, hopefully, Sunday can primarily be about the games and little else.

To think that around a decade ago, when the Xbox One released, this would have taken up about 3/4 of their main showcase. Now, it's all been announced outside of the showcase AND today's Summer Games Fest so the focus can be on games... Good stuff, Microsoft!

Lol if they drop this amount of news today, they just got to have a lot of games to show sunday, Oh yep the family plan, but already paid up till first quarter 2025, but maybe upgradable.
Don't think it's ready yet maybe something for the holiday season?

Mix bag of announcements. Glad they got this out of the way today.

Design labs - disappointing, only because I hoped they would finally incorporate consoles.
Pride pad… I’m way to cynical to pat a trillion dollar corporation on the back for trying to sell ‘pride’. Is what it is. Not for me.
More options is always good though.

Demos… worrying, very worrying. Starts with indies, that’s fine. But we’re getting plenty of indies anyway. So am I to take from that that these games aren’t good enough to be paid fully to come onto gamepass? Or are these sneak previews where they come before they’re released? What is the actual point?
And of course it doesn’t stop at indies… not when big third party publishers are investing in making demos for Sonys sub. So does this mean less third party full games on gamepass now? Less third party day 1?
Either way, I don’t see how I benefit from demos. I see this helping psplus though…as it means more devs will likely invest in creating demos.
And however you care to spin it…we’re now paying for demos.
What this also means in the future is worrying…as you know ms is looking for a way to break up gamepass tiers further…especially if/when gold goes.

Cloud streaming… this is the only real positive sounding announcement. Getting it as an app on tv has been the goal from the start. Allowing access to streaming our gaming libraries not just gamepass content is also good news. How select the titles will be remains to be seen as first party always be on gamepass.

So yeah. Mix bag of news

@Bleachedsmiles This one may involve creating specific demos. PS's version of it just includes timed play of the main game being built in, so work on one may not do anything for the other. Both can go douse themselves in gasoline though.

There's really no way to spin paying for interactive commercials as a positive. Every time I think modern gaming can't get worse, it somehow does. At this point just watching TV is starting to look like an improvement to gaming.

@Royalblues it is good for them to get cloud gaming on tvs etc… hopefully it means they’ll finally work on ensuring cloud gaming works better for us xbox gamepass players - get co op finally working with it. As you have to imagine that’s now a priority when you’re bringing a service out on hardware you can no longer download to. Not a good look chasing that extra revenue only to find all the couch co op games on gamepass you can’t actually play in co op as you gather around your Samsung.

Still wanting to be able to stream PC GamePass games. Some good ones that are PC-only.

@NEStalgia I just honestly don’t get the point of it. Remember, they told us last gen the reason why demos died was because they cost too much to produce. Added extra stress and resources. So now Xbox is asking indie devs to do demos from their 1-5 hour games…for the purpose of what? Extra marketing? Charging gamepass subscribers for this…so we can what? Discover what’s on its way to gamepass earlier? …. So Xbox is telling me they want to charge me to play a demo of a game they’re already charging me to put on gamepass fully? How does this benefit me? If the games going to be available to me regardless?
Or are they giving demos of games that aren’t going to be on gamepass…under the reasoning they want to support indies by giving them more exposure…yet placing these demos still behind the paywall of gamepass?… it makes no sense.

And you know it’s not going to stop at indies. You know there’s a bigger catch here. You know all the arguments of “how is this sustainable”…well, why secure third party full releases day 1 if your new sales pitch is exclusive demos of these games. That’s how they’ll try to sell us on accepting less. And it will work.

New game demo service sounds good, but I hope it doesn't deter studios from putting their games on Game Pass if they can offer demos instead.

@TheSilverFalcon I was thinking the same thing the next few days should be a ton of new info.

@Bleachedsmiles Yeah, and Sony's approach, though not really any less bad, probably solves the "costs too much to produce" aspect by just putting a timer on execution and not doing much else. But I never quite bought the "costs too much" angle. It's marketing. How does that not come out of the marketing budget? I've always viewed it as being about "if people play a little of the game they'll never buy the whole game."

My firm opinion is the way this worked is, MS heard through the grapevine from partners, 3rd parties, or purchased studios receiving PS dev notices that Sony was doing this, and simply knee-jerk scrambled to organize the same feature to not be left out. MS, also being a PS developer, including timed exclusives, would know whatever PS is doing as soon as any devs, including first party/exclusive partners know. This just seems like a desperate move to copy whatever they're doing, even if it's done differently, even if it makes no sense.

What I'm assuming is that these are for games not destined for GP, to give GP subs a way to check out games they can buy at full price. But then, why not make that same demo public and hit an even bigger audience? I truly don't understand who benefits here. Publishers get to reach a small audience instead of a big audience for their interactive commercial. Gamers have to pay for free commercials. Who is it for?

The idea it's designed to break down GP and cut the value for new releases may well be what it's about, but I'm not sure it's even that. It feels more like falling over themselves to not be left behind Sony's offering to publishers (offer, or blackmail?) more than an actual plan to change GP. Even for indies that say it's a great deal for them and pays for development.....how does demos help them?

It's just weird to me. Who gets excited about access to paying for a demo? Then again there's the whales that buy games for $30 extra for "limited editions" to get 4 days early access to the game. Mostly I'm guessing it's the teen/tween FOMO crowd that doesn't want their friends to have something before they do? Or something.

I did have to laugh on the similar article on Push when PS announced it that people were arguing that if people play 5 hours of HFW they'd never buy the whole game. We somehow went from "best games in the industry!!1" to "meh, if you've seen 5 hours, you've seen it all."

@NEStalgia Yeah it’s stupid. Who really has fomo over an indie game though so much they crave playing a demo a few weeks before the full release on gamepass?

Even a knee jerk reaction to what Sony is doing doesn’t make sense. I mean you would have to imagine that ms would have known what Sony was doing with psplus game trials long before it was officially announced…they work with the same people who would have been told about Sonys intent, hell they’re buying activision…you have to imagine cod is going to have a game trial already arranged.

The only way something like this would make sense would be if they remarket it as ‘previews’ rather than demos. And stick all the early access games in there - Arma, grounded etc… use it as an excuse to get more early access games on there that have a separate category away from the rest of gamepass…that are games not finished/released for a while.
Tbh I’m not even a fan of paying for unfinished games as part of my subscription. But least early access makes more sense than demos…just about.

So where is the Game Pass Annual Subscription Bundle price?

If Microsoft wants to keep most those coming off that $1 deal they are really needing offer up 12 months for $100 or such.

$15 monthly just overpriced in my opinion. Plus people like me that truly despise paying monthly subscriptions versus paying for the entire year in one payment (ESPECIALLY with discount) going to lose interest fast.

I really like the Samsung TV announcement. I have a bunch of TVs and have traditionally bought consoles for each one so I can "game anywhere in my home" but with cloud gaming and them announcing you will be able to play games you own as well too, that is going to allow me to play more games in more places when I am unable to use my main setup.

Thanks MS, this will save me significant money just like GamePass is.

ffs release it to the whole europe already. we have a single digital market...

@demian I still don't understand why if xcloud can receive form a server why the app can't also receive from your Xbox in another room. Just let us use our expensive box as a server style box to play around the house to reduce the latency back to the data centre.