Microsoft wants to raise the bar high to E3

Image Credit: AS_Empire

On Sunday, Microsoft will travel to Los Angeles where the company will hold its annual E3 speech. Unlike previous years, the company has a chance to fully hold the projector because Sony does not make the trip. With xCloud and a new generation of consoles on the horizon, the company has a lot to talk about.

In recent weeks, the forums, Twitter, Reddit and almost every other community of players have filled with "leaks". Although I think most of them are only logical assumptions, after talking to many people in the industry and to Microsoft insiders, here are my expectations for the Microsoft E3 event.

On the hardware side, I'm waiting for Microsoft to start tearing apart the secrecy surrounding their next generation consoles, Anaconda and Lockhart. For those who hope to see a list of raw specifications, I do not think it's still on the agenda. Instead, look for the company to provide performance multipliers for hardware; I've heard that Lockhart and Anaconda were aiming for at least 2x performance gain for high-end (Anaconda) and 4x for low-end hardware (Lockhart).

In addition, the company will likely highlight features of the new platform, such as the use of SSDs, Navi, Zen 2 graphics cards, backward compatibility, and other components of the AMD platform. In addition, expect to hear how these new consoles can use existing Xbox One X games and enhance the graphical and gaming experience. By retaining explicit specifications, this allows the company to talk about features underlying console without playing all his cards for future devices.

And there is an important reason behind this approach, the final configurations and performance are always changing. Do not forget that these consoles are in more than a year, Microsoft will not announce everything during this event, but enough to keep the event interesting, but important details will be kept until their release.

On the games side, Microsoft will present 14 titles from their own gaming studios, according to Phil Spencer. I think songs like Gears of War 5 (code name Halifax) will be heavily featured and we'll also see articles like the new downloadable content for State of Decay 2, Forza Horizon 4 Expansion 2, the trailer and the gameplay of Halo Infinite , Age of Empires info, details of the fable can also be added; there seems to be at least three new IP addresses we have never seen before.

Microsoft wants to raise the bar high to E3

For Halo Infinite, it will be the first real show of the next generation game. Microsoft will run demos from a PC with an Xbox controller because they do not want the first impression of the new game to run on the now obsolete Xbox One hardware.

In addition to Microsoft's strong presence as a leading provider, sources within the company say it's one of the best third-party results in its E3 history.

But the darling of the event will be the company's xCloud service. Microsoft has been talking about this service for about a year and at E3 we will have a fresh look at the offer. Although I do not think Microsoft will release xCloud's gross performance numbers, I've heard that this is the best of the 10.7 terflops previously reported by Google.

Expect to see new service demonstrations and I know that at some point they were looking for a demonstration outside the site. Meaning, a demo that shows someone who uses xCloud at home but I have not heard if this scenario made the final cut.

As Microsoft announced last week, GamePass for PC will be the subject of much more detailed discussions. I noticed last week that the company was working on a new PC application for the service named Garrison and WalkingCat found evidence of its existence. Supporting my message, Microsoft is also redefining the Xbox PC App as an Xbox console today, paving the way for the new application in the very near future.

In addition, I still believe that Game Pass for PC will be included in Game Pass Ultimate and that evidence to support my original message has also surfaced.

There are still questions as to whether Microsoft will have a separate reference for GamePass only on the PC. According to the French trademarks registered, it would seem that this will be the case since Microsoft has claimed the name of copyright protection, but it could also do so to protect itself legally and not to launch the autonomous SKU.

And of course, you can expect new game ads for Game Pass to be announced.

A strange thing that I have not heard of if it will be discussed is the Master Chief Collection for PC. The game has already started badly, because the initial public timeline to start the tests is over and it may take a few more months before we see a real beta, according to insiders, for many games of the suite; deadlines are still pretty fluid.

When you look at all the important announcements: high level speech about the hardware features of the next-gen console, xCloud demonstrations, PC Game Pass details, a set of announcements of new games for the first and the third part and sprinkle a few other jewels, this turns out to be an important event for Microsoft.

Even if they could have dialed the number since Sony would not be there, it seems that they have doubled their volume to make this show one of the best of all years. Phil Spencer has been at the top of the hierarchy for several years on the Xbox, his brand transformation projects begin to materialize.

Tagged with E3, Microsoft