It feels quite apt that Xbox has really started to nail this summer showcase business these past few years. Those few years being right when the summer showcase as a concept is starting to look just a little out of date. Back in the heady E3 days, team green used to pack out their LA Live Microsoft theatre, just along from the main show floor, and then frequently go on to, most of the time, sort of biff it. In the post E3 years that moved to the slightly smaller-still-swanky Grammy Museum, as Xbox stubbornly refused to give up an inch of ground in a fight that had, actually, really ended quite a long time ago. Sony and Nintendo had long since moved to doing everything via some version of pre-recorded direct. And now this year, when it feels like it’s finally cracked the summer game showcase formula for good, finally listened and learned and done all of that good stuff, it also clocked on that it might be time to follow its peers in sagely ducking out of the in-person wrestlefest at last.
I thought the Xbox showcase this year was quite good, as it has been honestly for the past couple of years as well. This one in particular was a show that felt packed-out in a different, more modern kind of way, forgoing megabudget bombast and distant vapourware, as genuinely fun as they can be, for a selection of curios and upper-mid-sized ventures. The kind we all keep saying these folks should really be making more of.
The result is a sense of Xbox leading a kind of new-wave games industry charge. It would’ve made for a pretty good on-stage show, really. They could’ve made a few quips about games that’ll actually ship, or games that don’t get pulled from storefronts a week after launch. And it’s especially stage-worth with an actual, physical prop to wave around in the handheld Xbox Ally X. Imagine Don Mattrick hoisting that big ol’ thing aloft triumphantly in front of an audience of whoopers and hollerers, before inevitably finding some new way to trip up over his own feet. Magic.
Instead all the best corpo-cringe was saved for quiet, back room briefings away from the public eye – namely the one, , three-part promotional video that members of the press were treated to at the end of their Ally X hands-ons. (Much more on that handheld to come from us, but do feel free to treat yourself to the longest 11 minutes of your life by watching that promo if you like – you’ve been warned!)
Inside: ROG Xbox Ally – Behind the Scenes Feature Watch on YouTube
Back to the showcases, anyway, and Xbox’s impeccable, finely tuned rhythm and sense of variety contrasted pretty starkly, I felt, with the Summer Game Fest Opening Showcase’s carnival of grot. Watch the SGF showcase alone – which I expect some people may well do, given its major prominence at the heart of all “summer of gaming” exhibitions – and you’d be forgiven for thinking video games were having some kind of existential teenage regression.