Microsoft’s E3 conference – a lot of bang and a lot of games, and a very loose use of the term “exclusive”

If anything, Microsoft is still learning from their earlier E3 presentations, as they are once more focusing on games, games, and more games. Apart from finally presenting the look of their mid-generation upgrade console (previously known as Scorpio), XBox One X, they also presented several real and a whole lot of semi-exclusives for the platform.

The new 4k-capable console (which was very much reiterated during the presentation) looks stellar and supposedly performs like that as well. The show opened with Forza 7 Motorsport in 4k at 60fps, all nice and native, with heavy weather and loads of cars on track. They also had “dynamic puddles”, so add that to your vocabulary. XBox One X will feature backwards compatibility of the original XBox One, with faster loading times, anisotropic filtering, as well as supersampling support for 1080p tvs, and all that in a tight little package that is smaller than XBox One S. Oh, and there’s the small matter of $499 you have to part with if you want one.

The big news is also that Microsoft continues to work hard on backwards compatibility – so much so that they’ve gone back two generations. Original XBox games will be coming to the new platform, supposedly with some improvements (probably similar to PS4 Pro’s “boost mode”). Kudoz to Microsoft for that move, although it might not be a gamechanger, really.

The list of games that were shown one after another include only a handful of real exclusives for Xbox One, and those include State of Decay 2, Sea of Thieves and Crackdown 3. That is a bit skinny, especially since a powerful new console has just been presented. It is a shame that no new AAA exclusive comes with it, as it would help Microsoft in their bid for the console market share.

We will talk more of the games that appeared on Microsoft’s conference in a little while, so stay tuned.