Dansk
Svenska
Norsk
Suomi
Deutsch
Italiano
Português
Français
Nederlands
中文版
Indonesia
Polski
日本語
한국어
Česko
Ελληνικά
Türkçe
Tiếng Việt
عربي
Follow us
Gamereactor
Videos
HQ
Xbox Games Showcase + Starfield Direct - Impressions and Highlights
After a pretty solid show but no tangible games, devs, or release dates, our own David Caballero and Ben Lyons reflect about what it was, and what it could have been, on the rooftop of The Novo theatre in Los Angeles, with the legendary Hotel Figueroa in the background. Can we trust the developers on the promises of Forza Motorsport and Starfield when they weren't playable? Will 2024 be one of the best years in Xbox history?
Audio transcription
"All right, we're here in very chilly, indeed, L.A.
seeing the fantastic, always classical, traditional Hotel Figueroa which doesn't have a video game ad this time around but it's, you know, it's kind of convenient Transformers looks poppy and culture-wise it fits and even though it's chilly, we are still warm, I would say from the Xbox showcase, which I think was really, really good, really solid even though I have some opinions to share but let's perhaps, first of all, give a headline which would be your headline of this showcase?
Well, I mean, look, I mean everyone is going to say Starfield because of what was shown, we got to see a lot of the game but I think that's kind of a given, so I'm going to ignore that and I'm going to say, it's a toss-up between either Fable or Star Wars for me but we're going to go with Fable because we're going to see more Star Wars tomorrow at the Ubisoft Forward, that's when we're going to see some gameplay and that's when it's going to get really exciting, I think so I'm going to say Fable it's kind of an interesting one because there was that sort of promise that we're going to get a lot of gameplay in this showcase and for a lot of the big names, it wasn't really that it was in-engine footage, which is a different thing and it looks good, it looks interesting and I hope that Playground is a pretty excellent developer they've done a lot of great things in the past so I'm excited to see more of the game Richard Ayoade is in it and he's very popular in the UK so that makes it even more interesting for us with Playground being a British developer as well so I'm excited to see more Fable, I think that was one of the key ones for me but what about yourself, Dev?
Yeah, for me, the headline of the show itself would be like we were discussing before Xbox is back into the game, but just not in 2023 so it's what you were saying that most of the things we saw were either 2024 or no date given and, you know, I'm a Forza fan myself and it concerns me to not see the game playable at all at the show there's some fan fest going on now a lot of activities with the fans they don't get to play Forza, they get to play Cyberpunk Expansion Some people, some people, not everyone, some select few Very limited and, you know, you're releasing Forza on October the 10th it's June, mid-June normally we would be playing Forza we would be interviewing Dan Greenewald and the team at Turn 10 that really concerns me in terms of has the simulation, you guys changed it all?
Is it going to be good on controllers?
Is it going to be good on a racing wheel like Citroën?
And with Starfield, it's the same I was sold to the game, I'm going to play that game I loved the showcase, the video itself was fantastic, I enjoyed it but it isn't playable We cannot speak with Todd Howard here and the game is releasing even earlier so it really smells and I don't like that, this is not the way I don't mean it should be the way it was back in the E3 days but, you know, we are media, we are here to I won't say to tell the truth, we are here to share opinions Unbiased as best as possible, yeah I'll just nick that off you in a minute Yeah, that's the point, the showcase we were in you'll see various videos of it on our Instagrams and various other social channels and whatnot it was very active, it was very lively that's because it's packed with fans people who love and live Xbox that's not our job to just love and live Xbox, right?
Look, Xbox has got a lot of things coming but we're supposed to be impartial we're supposed to be able to tell you honest opinions and it's difficult to do that when you don't get to play the things and that's the same with Starfield lately it looks fantastic the idea, the promise of what this game has in store is unbelievable if it can hit everything that it promises it's going to be revolutionary but the problem is, is that we've had games like that come in the past in just the immediate future you look at Cyberpunk and it rings alarm bells for me because I was at the last E3 where they had this massive hall dedicated to Cyberpunk they showed the game off it was like, yeah, look, you bring everyone in show off all this footage and it's like, well it's hands off and you're like, okay, it doesn't matter it looks great, it's still really exciting and then December rolls around the next year, or whenever the game launches September, whatever it was and it's a completely different story so that's why I'm kind of having to temper my expectations with a lot of what we've seen here look, it was a great show it was really exciting it was better than Summer Game Fest it was better than PlayStation Showcase but until we get to play these games and be able to tell you truthfully how they feel in our hands I'm going to just keep my expectations a little bit in check I think that's the best way to put it Yeah, and it's coming back to Starfield a little bit I really love how it looks like the different planets have been designed like a multiverse of humanities that could have been living on Earth in other games but the big question here is which landing points are you going to have?
How can you really explore the whole planet?
Is it going to be empty?
What other sort of activities are going to be repetitive?
Is it going to hook me when I land on a planet?
Or is it going to be like No Man's Sky at first?
So, yeah, I keep my expectations in check but other than that, it was colorful To me, this show meant, of course we're starting to see the product the result of the studios Microsoft acquired back in the day Senua's Saga looks fantastic the new game by InXile Clockwork Revolution was something I wasn't expecting because these guys are into RPGs and it looked like a really fresh sort of Bioshock type of immersive sim The Capcom game was a surprise to me I was expecting one of their franchises to come back Onimus or something like that but it was something new a lot of colorful games Stoic, which apparently had some sort of deal with Microsoft going on as well and it looked fantastic it's not 2D anymore so we could mention several, several games and of course the little surprise of Star Wars which, you know, Ubisoft is tomorrow and we still had this to-be-announced-to game which was after Prince of Persia and we could sort of think it could be Star Wars but it could be also very early to be Star Wars and it was and that looks fantastic only from the..."
"but you know, Ubisoft is showing gameplay tomorrow so it's more tangible so other than those which other announcements would you...
You know, Fable wasn't shown either It was CGI It looked..."
"In-engine The humor is great and it's there as you said, Phil said it too It's British, it's there, you can feel it but you don't know how the game is going to be No That's my entire concern with this show and look, they didn't do what they did last year right, the year before whenever the last one was when it was, you know, 12 everything that's coming within 12 months they didn't do that and they didn't put any timelines when they didn't need to and I respect that you know, it's more just about this is what we've got coming it's exciting it gives people things to believe in in the future and I like that, I think it works but yeah, there's a lot of in-engine footage doesn't really give you an idea of how these things work and look, I don't want to talk about Starfield too much more but it's a game that..."
"we've known about the macro of this game for so long about the massive things that it's going to offer it's the minor that concerns me it's the..."
"when I go to a planet that's in the middle of nowhere or a moon in the middle of nowhere is there anything to do?
because if there's not then the whole promise of a thousand planets means nothing to me and you know, you combine that with a whole bunch of other things like performance you know, it's a Bethesda game Bethesda Softworks game and they are notorious for being kind of shaky very shaky, one could say and then when you have so many things that one game promises I'm concerned about how big it's going to be Star Wars Jedi Survivor was 150 gigabytes of data and that was like three planets is this going to be like a two terabyte game?
there's so many little questions that I have that didn't get answered in the direct and that's my thing with Starfield it's great that you can go and hoard sandwiches if you want but I'm not going to be doing that if that's your jam, go for it but there's a lot of questions that I want answered still about this game yes, look, if we could play it we could answer some of those questions but we can't so we've just got to wait until September it takes me back to the format we are here in LA you can see it we are here at the Microsoft Space it's not the Microsoft Theater but we are here at the Novo Theater and now we understand why because it has some space for the FanFest type of thing, etc."
"but they are not taking the chance not for us, not for any other outlet not for media they're not giving the chance to talk to the developers and not even you know, we watched a video that you guys watched at home the theater is fantastic, of course but we saw Phil Spencer come on stage you didn't see that right before the show to present himself and to sort of talk to the fans not to the media and then afterwards that wasn't shown I don't think that was shown on the video we saw Todd Howard and Matt Booty and Phil again, and Sarah and they were thanking and they were pretty emotional, etc."
"but during the show itself they didn't touch the stage no and now they're not around for us to speak with them and these games are releasing are around the corner so, yeah I can understand why this show is really good to watch it's colorful, as I said love the Sega Atlus appearances but I kind of, you know, I'm doubtful it was flashy but it doesn't exactly give me a lot of confidence in what's coming that's the best way I can possibly like it put it into a short sentence, shall we say that's my kind of stance on what we saw fantastic show they should go back to the showcase being a showcase normally after this we would go to a space we would try the games we would speak with the developers but, that's what it was we enjoyed it so, looking forward to learning more about Xbox if I say X you say box if I say X box"
Summer Events
More
Videos
More
Movie Trailers
More
Trailers
More
Events
More