E3 2013 - Microsoft

When Microsoft first unveiled the Xbox One, I didn’t know what to write. The presentation was focused less on games and more on entertainment which I didn’t care for. By the end of their hour long presentation, it felt incomplete, so I decided to wait till E3, as I had a feeling Microsoft got all that unpleasantness out of the way for the games. And you know what, I was right. Microsoft had a great E3, that was until a certain unnamed elephant in the room stepped up to the plate (but more on that later).

Metal Gear Solid 5 opened up the Microsoft presser, and boy does it look good. An open world Metal Gear, something they have been promising since Snake Eater, looks to be finally coming into fruition. From there, they went from game to game to game, each looking interesting. There really wasn’t anything extraneous. The biggest surprise, Insomniac Games are making an exclusive for Xbox One! I never thought I would see the day. That was huge. Game-wise, Microsoft had a great lineup of games.

Going into E3, we knew some disappointing things about Xbox One; there will be a used games limit, the console will have to log on once within a 24hour period, and it will come packaged in with an fixed 500gb HDD (you can have an external HDD for more space). All we needed was price, and for all its offering, I expected it to be a little high, but to lower the entry cost, I was waiting for a version with a subscription base. However, we are getting it for $499 this November, which is fine (a little high), but at least not of the astronomical levels of the PS3.

So how did they do? Not bad. They didn’t blow anyone away, but they had a solid (Snake?) showing. And it was the best presser until Ubi went later in the day (and of course Sony), but it failed to wow. I’d have to give it a solid B+. If Halo had been in playable form, would have been bumped up to an A-, and sadly, they ended up getting hurt by being first. 

My thoughts on Sony, EA and Ubi will be up later today.