Xbox focuses on impressive games, not the elephants in the room
Impressions of Microsoft's 2024 gaming showcase. Plus: An interview with the makers of Call of Duty Black Ops 6
The reveal of a new Gears of War prequel got the loudest cheers in a theater in Los Angeles today, as Microsoft showed off the near year or so’s worth of big games coming from its studios and partners.
Other notable crowd reactions:
“Yeah, Xbox!” after a trailer for A44’s action game Flintlock.
“Day one!” after gameplay footage of Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight
“Too many games!” after a new showing of Obsidian’s role-playing game Avowed. (Other people jeered that sentiment.)
Cheers are not unexpected at a big mid-year gaming showcase, where industry folks, influencers and media sit to watch an hour (or two) of game announcements.
Gone are the days of Microsoft doing these presentations live on stage with executives and developers in the flesh, queuing up trailers. Now they pop in to greet the crowd (I missed it!), the lights go down and the show begins. It’s a movie, complete with complimentary boxes of popcorn available before you enter.
For today’s event, the David Geffen Theater—capacity 952—was packed, though it had room for some undiscussed elephants.
The show made no mention of Xbox’s big layoffs earlier this year or recently-shuttered studios. No surprise there.
More conspicuously, there was little evidence or acknowledgment of the tension around Xbox these days, no whiff that this gaming mega-team is dabbling with bringing more of its games to the rival PlayStation—and suffering some skepticism from its most hardcore fans because of it. In fact, a trailer for season 13 of Sea of Thieves, a game that came to PlayStation with season 12, only hyped it for Xbox and PC.
As for efforts to revive sagging Xbox hardware sales, there was something: Microsoft’s announcement of a new disc-drive-free version of the Xbox Series X came with the appropriately lower price ($450 vs. the disc drive version’s $500).
Flashback: In February, I asked Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer about rumors of disc-drive-free Series X and whether his company is moving away from disc-based games. His answer: “We are supportive of physical media, but we don't have a need to drive that disproportionate to customer demand.”
The games
From what was shown, the 2024 highlights from MIcrosoft’s studios include:
Obsidian RPG Avowed (PC, Xbox) - TBD 2024
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (PC, Xbox) - TBD 2024
Starfield: Shattered Space [expansion] (PC, Xbox) - TBD 2024
World of Warcraft: The War Within (PC) - Aug 26
Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred [expansion] (PC, Xbox, PlayStation) - Oct 8
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) - Oct 25
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (PC, Xbox) - Nov 19
And for beyond…
Doom: The Dark Ages (PC, Xbox, PlayStation) - 2025 ← A newly revealed prequel
Fable (PC, Xbox) - 2025
South of Midnight (PC, Xbox) - 2025 ← My favorite game of the presentation. A woman uses magic powers to fight giant alligators in the Louisiana bayou. Looked fun!
Perfect Dark - TBD
State of Decay 3 - TBD
Gears of War: E-Day - TBD ← A newly revealed prequel (though dev studio The Coalition promised in an Xbox blog post that they’re not abandoning the story of recent Gears sequels)
Attendees of today’s event were also offered Xbox jackets… (I declined)
Item 2: A CoD Q&A
Shortly after the showcase, I sat down for a group interview with Yale Miller, director of production at Treyarch, and Matt Scronce, associate director of design at Treyarch, to discuss Black Ops 6.
The upcoming first-person shooter is set in the early ‘90s and will include a campaign, multiplayer and a new chapter in Treyarch’s supernatural Zombines co-op mode.
It’s also the first Call of Duty after Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard and the first that’ll be offered via the Game Pass subscription on day one.
We talked campaign length, working on a unified Call of Duty engine that is shared by other CoD studios and more. Plus: They deftly dodged my Nintendo question.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. I’ve only includes the answers to questions I asked, and not those from other reporters in the room.
Game File: How have you incorporated feedback from players about recent Call of Duty games’ campaigns? In terms of length and what they’re looking for in a campaign?
Yale Miller, Treyarch: Currently, the game's netting out in the kind of length of a classic Call of Duty campaign.
Variety is a big one that we heard from fans. They don't want one note for your experiences. Luckily for us, Black Ops kind of lends itself to that, where you can do your heist missions, and your puzzle-solving and stealth and your big military incursions as well…While they want a lot of freedom, and they want a lot of variety…they also want to get taken on the roller coaster rides as well…
I think a big goal for us all is just to give players the opportunity to be smart, where you're not just taking them on this journey the whole time, where they have the opportunity to explore and decide how they want to get through a situation.
Game File: What has the impact of Microsoft’s purchase been on the game, big or small, since the purchase? Admittedly, it came late in the game’s development cycle…
Matt Scronce, Treyarch: Realistically, like on the ground floor, we've been focused [and] nothing much has changed.
I’ve worked on Black Ops games. It’s been a little bit of a shake up, you know, a little bit of excitement, a little something different. But I think in general the idea of more players being able to play our game that we've been working on is [exciting.]
Game File: Did they send you anything?
Miller: I think we got t-shirts.
Game File: What did the t-shirts say?
Miller: Just Microsoft family stuff.
Game File: Do you recall the moment you found out that you’d be on Game Pass?
Miller: It wasn't that long ago, frankly.
Game File: Do you recall the meeting? How did it happen? A phone call? An email?
Miller: I think it was a conversation, just internally with meeting with the Activision folks on those pieces, and talking about the opportunity for us. It was more like, ‘What does that mean?’
I think the exciting thing for us is what Matt said: just more people will be able to try the game. For us, I think it did force us to kind of relook—we've been thinking a lot about onboarding from the beginning anyway.
It’s been four years since [the last] Black Ops… Zombies is super deep rich. It's got quest lines and story. Some people just may not even remember that. With new players, how do you bring people into that universe?…
Sometimes we take for granted that a lot of people play Call of Duty and have been playing Call of Duty before. 'Oh, they'll get it. You know, they've played this before.' So I think it has forced us to relook at some of that.
Game File: Black Ops 6 wasn’t announced for cloud. Ubisoft, which has Call of Duty cloud rights, has a showcase on Monday. Can you say anything about Black Ops 6 coming to cloud or not?
Miller: Currently we're just talking about the premium title and some of the platform stuff. We're focused on Xbox and PS5, obviously, and PC. There's ongoing work around the cloud stuff and conversations, but nothing to report.
Game File: As part of the Microsoft acquisition, there was a commitment to bring Call of Duty eventually to Nintendo platforms. Is it safe to assume that's not happening with Black Ops 6? That will be something in the future for other Call of Dutys?
Miller: Right now, for us, the focus is the gaming and the platforms, so that is what we're talking about, so that is what we're focused on right now.
Game File: That’s a confusing answer. You know that.
[Note: I was glancing at my phone, where I had loaded up an Xbox news article that listed Black Ops 6 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and PC.]
PR person: It’s not on the listed platforms.
Game File: [laughs] I know that from reading this.
Game File: How long have you been working on this game?
Scronce: It was about four years. We started in conceptual development after [2020’s Call of Duty: Black Ops] Cold War.
Game File: Is that longer than you’ve had before?
Scronce: Yeah
Game File: That must feel nice.
Scronce: Yeah.
Miller: In the time that we finished Cold War, we also made an engine transition as well. So that was a big part of that—moving off the Treyarch engine and onto a kind of unified Call of Duty engine, which has definitely had its benefits. But there was also that time when we were making that transition…
It’s the first Treyarch game [on that engine].
It's basically a platform as an engine that we're able to build on. So we brought a bunch of stuff to it as well. And then, obviously the folks at [Infinity Ward], Sledgehammer and others, they'll be able to kind of build on top and versus us trying to outdo each other, I guess.
Game File: Thank you for your time.
New record for most number of games from a single showcase added to the must-play list -- including Mixtape and South of Midnight.
Isn't that Troy Baker as the voice of Indy ... astonishing replication of Harrison's timbre and mannerisms. Same exact punching sounds from the films, too.