Yesterday’s Xbox showcase failed as a pitch to buy a new games console – but perhaps Microsoft is playing a different game altogether.
Game Pass is another matter. Let’s get the obvious comparison out of the way, now that we can compare the summer’s two great trailer showcases – separated this year by six weeks rather than the usual day and a half: Sony edged it. Neither PlayStation nor Xbox delivered a slam dunk when making the software case for their new hardware launches this year. Stripped of the wheeler-dealing, jostle and theatricality whipped up by the industry’s convergence on Los Angeles for E3 in a normal year, there was a sense of hesitancy about both showings, with many exclusive properties and first-party studios not ready to take the virtual stage, and most big third-party publishers declining to lend their weight to either side. We saw a lot of indie games – great for representing the true diversity of the medium, not so good as ammunition in a hype war. We didn’t get a decisive megaton announcement from either. Still, Sony was more convincing. It had, in Resident Evil Village, the patronage of one storied third-party franchise (just the one). It had a few arresting curveballs, like Ghostwire: Tokyo, Pragmata and Little Devil Inside, plus a spectacular remake of Demon’s Souls for the gaming cognoscenti. The PlayStation Studios exclusives felt that little bit closer and more tangible than their Xbox counterparts, especially in the impressive gameplay footage of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Gran Turismo 7. It had a simple pitch: if you want to play these games, buy a PlayStation 5. Astonishingly, we still can’t be sure that we have seen a game running on Xbox Series X Xbox’s showcase last night was bookended by a gameplay demo of Halo Infinite – a very tangible prospect, to be fair, but one which you will be able to play on Xbox One and which was reportedly captured on PC – and a teaser reveal for a new Fable that, while cute, had little to add to the rumours of its existence that have circulated for years. Much of what filled the space between them was interesting, exciting or both, from the emotional lockdown trailer for Tetris Effect: Connected to the news that Fatshark was taking its trademark co-op chaos into the Warhammer 40K realm with Darktide. But most of it was frustratingly opaque.
