Microsoft’s conference was once again really good, with the announcement of a flurry of new games, a new modular controller, and also an update on a nice amount of games, take a look below! 

 

They started off with a cool montage of different characters, pretty amazing, after which they started everything up, without any dubstep this year.

Bonnie Ross took the stage, studio head at 343 industries, again there was another monologue about the line-up coming this year.

Halo 5 Guardians was introduced not soon after, with a quick intro, a cinematic trailer began, and after the gameplay started. It took be a while to realise, but this was actually a live demo – which confirmed that there will be 4 player co-op, undoubtedly online only, and not couch.

The classic Halo guns returned, the graphics for a current gen game were nice but not crazy impressive like Quantum Break. In the gameplay demo there wer some new enemies that could teleport right in front of you, this will make for some pretty good gameplay.

Josh Holmes, exec producer at 343 took centre stage yet to confirm the 4 player co-op. He announced the multiplayer aspect about the game and mentioned that it will be 24 player multiplayer with AI ‘adversaries’, seemingly like Titalfall.

The MP demo was a quick fire 30-second trailer, which didn’t really get much across other than the fact that it exists.

 

The next game that was announced was  Recore, coming in 2016. Lead by Keiji Ifanune, take a look at the gameplay below, it looks nice, but I’m unsure how gameplay will play.

After the trailer Phil Spencer took the stage and queue the dubstep, Recore is a first party exclusive, he went on to speak about the diversity of different games that will show up this week.

Here’s a megaton for you all:

Xbox One will be supporting backwards compatibility.

Not what you might think though, what I got from it was that games need to be specially coded to work on the On, yet when you put your disc in it is free. To piggyback, everything will work as per normal, and you can still broadcast, use DVR and all of the XBONE features. Either way, this is awesome news!

 

Phil Spencer introduced a new controller, not the one rumoured, however – an ‘elite’ controller. and might I say it’s bloody fantastic, the amount you can customise it from simple button remapping to switchable analogue sticks, and even further to paddle sticks, which could come in useful for hanging gear in racing games.

 

 

Todd Howard took to stage to further talk about Fallout 4, to start off he simply expanded on what was said yesterday a few new bits of gameplay, but something we didn’t see was  introducing how you get the power armour and you using it for a while.

Something awesome, was that any mods made on PC will actually be cross compatible on Xbox One, which could make for some fun indeed.

COO of EA, Peter Moore took to stage to speak about EA Access,  and announced that Madden 16, Need For Speed will be playable before everyone else – and introduced that Titanfall will be coming to the survice today and Dragon Age will be coming to the service soon.  Something nice for EA to do, is that Peter Moore announced that EA Access will be free for all Xbox Gold members this week,

He also announced Plants vs Warfare Garden Warfare 2 , arriving next spring, new plants include corn, which shoots like machine gun, and on the zombie side pirates and superheroes, and many more:

A video about Ford’s legacy started next, obviously to talk about Forza 6, they lowered a 2015 Ford GT onto the stage, like they did in the 2013 conference, and it did look really sexy.

Queue a quick montage of racing, the environments were really nice, with the clarification that it’ll be in 1080/60, it’s really an added bonus, take a look at the gameplay below:

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Another world premiere, and comes from the developers From Software. I was very surprised at this, in the trailer there were some epic monsters and characters in it, it was a magnificent trailer, and I’m extremely cautious about what this means…..

 

The division was next, and after a quick cinematic trailer about a weaponised virus -they swiftly moved onto announcing an exclusive beta for Xbox one players in September, next, Rainbow 6 Sige was Spoken about, with a fresh new gameplay piece, not only that though, with the fresh announcement hat Xbox 360 games will be compatible, It was announced that Rinbow 6 Vegas, and Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 will both be playable at release of Siege, and, even better if you’ve purchased Siege, you will get those two games free!

 

Windows 10 and Xbox One exclusive montage, essentially an advert for their dev program, ID@Xbox, Chris Charla Director at ID@Xbox spoke about the program, and trying to entice developers, and also introduce some new Xbox exclusive games. The next game from Fullbright, Gone Home devs introduced their new game, Tacoma, with a small teaser there’s not much you can see other that it’s set on a spaceship

 

Ashen is the next game, developed by Aurora 44, I have no idea what this game is about, other than it features flying feathered whales.

Sherida Halatoe was introduced next, the developer of the game Beyond Eyes, you play a blind girl that sees with touch, sense and smell, I’m unsure whether there’s a story behind it or if it’s a game like proteus where you just explore, but it’s a pretty nice setting either way.

 

Jared and Chad, developers at Studio MDHR are making the game Cuphead – a fun looking 1930’s cartoon style game with a 16-bit platformer style gameplay feel to it:

A new program was announced, akin to Early access, under the name Xbox Game Preview, where you are able to play games that are still in development, with each game having a free demo so you can make an educated decision if you want to support the game before it’s ben released or not, a few games were announced for the service at the event, and they are:

• The long dark
• sheltered
• elite dangerous
• DayZ

 

Dean Hall creator of Day Z, introduced his new game, called Ion and seems like a realistic no mans sky.

Crystal Dynamics took to stage next for a live demo of Rise of the Tomb Raid – the details in the demo were fantastic, every ice pick that went into the ice you could see shavings of ice flick away, along with the footprints in the deep snow that moved out the way, it was pretty dramatic and reminded me of the Uncharted 2 E3 demo, if I’m honest, but comparisons aside, the music was amazing made the feel of the gameplay extra tense.

Following the gameplay, there was a trailer for the game, and the amount of different environments you are in is truly fantastic.

They were surely wasting no time this year with gameplay, up next was a montage of Rare games, and it showed 30 games for $30, August 13th release date this year

The studio head for Rare took to stage to introduce their new game as well, and it has been labeled as their most ambitious game as of yet. Sea of Thieves

The gameplay demo that freatured was cartoony yet somewhat photorealistic, it was a very cheerful demo and had a very nice vibe to it, to sum it up though, it’s a pirate game.

 

Fable Legends was next, and they re-iterated that it was free-to-play in a quick video:

Kudo Tsunoda, he was happy to announce that  there has been a new relationship between Windows 10 and Valve VR, to make VR easily accessable and easy to set up

Microsoft hololens featured too, I wasn’t expecting it to be perfectly honest – but queue the expected Minecraft bash, as per the E3 bingo sheet

This is the real reason they bought them out, the demo surely was amazing, but as Microsoft said this piece of kit won’t be cheap. I doubt we’ll be seeing this anytime soon for gaming again, but the demo was amazing, so here it is:

Rod Fergusson announced Gears Of War Ultimate Edition, the First game remastered in 1080/60, and a 1 week public beta for you all to try.

He also announced a new game, the next entry in the Gears Of War series, named Gears 4 for release in Holiday 2016with a live gameplay demo, once again the effects in the game were amazing, from a bridge crumbling and collapsing, to lightning strikes, they were all amazing.  Not soon after leaving an area they faced some large monsters, then it was the end of the demo

Phil Spencer took to stage now, and went on to speak about how awesome Xbox is – if he keeps this up, I may have to buy an Xbox One.