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How could Microsoft knock it out of the park this E3?

I'll be watching their conference more out of curiosity than anything else. The only game that could get me to buy an Xbone at this point is Halo and I am not confident at all in 343 in delivering a good enough game to achieve that.

What they need is more compelling new I.Ps and a price cut to match the PS4.
 
There are so many ways they could do it, but it all boils down to games, experiences, price.

I'd like to see even more exclusive games, especially from Japan, and I want them to start firing on all cylinders when it comes to original video/TV content. A $100 price drop would be advised even before E3, as long as Kinect is kept as an integral part of every single SKU, but (much) more quality Kinect software is absolutely required.

They really don't need to react to Sony's VR announcement yet, since the project could (and probably will) take a while. It would be far better to keep any potential add-on surprises under wraps until they're ready for prime time (of course, developers would have to be kept in the loop, I'm only talking about the general public).
 
I have a few ideas.
Prepare for a "too good to be true" prediction.
:P

Halo 5 gameplay trailer with glimpses of a Halo 3-like double scarab battle.
Gears 5 teaser that shows old Marcus and his son together walking in a dead city, something more like the fantastic Mad World trailer.
Forza Horizon 2 announcement/trailer.
Platinum's secret project announced and gameplay video shown.
Itagaki on stage showing a new gameplay trailer of Devil's Third.
New gameplay trailers of Sunset Overdrive & Quantum Break.
Phantom Dust 2 announcement.
100e/$ price drop.

So yeah they need some great exclusives AND a price drop.
 
Getting me to care about a console that's weaker and more expensive than the competition would be knocking it out of the park.
 
I thought that Microsoft had a good show last year, so take that and couple it with a half decent pricedrop or something.
 
As someone who was with the Xbox from the beginning, but jumped ship for the PS4, I actually sat and thought about the OP for a little bit. And the truth is, from my perspective, they simply can't. Microsoft are still feeling the pain of the reveal, the DRM, and the solid year of terrible PR. Even if Microsoft pulled off their greatest E3 ever, all it would do is essentially wipe that away and give them a clean slate to start from.

To achieve their best "E3 Ever" they'd need:
  • Kinect's Killer App.
  • Keep Kinect and drop the price by US$150.00
  • Several new IPs that all look amazing.
  • Remove the media features from behind the XBLG pay-wall
  • An amazing Halo 5 demo
  • Banjo-Kazooie 3
  • An on-stage apology for the attempted DRM

And I don't believe we're going to get a single one of those. I suspect Microsoft's big guns will be the Halo 2 remake, Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break. And a teaser for Halo 5. No price drop. No Kinect removal. But maybe three months of XBLG in the box instead.
 
People have been mentioning how the PS4 is supply constrained, but when my parents visited I went to all of the electronic stores. Target had two, and even walmart had three.
 
Introduce a kinectless SKU that shaves of $100 to stay competetive with Sony. The gap is simply too big to justify buying a console that performs worse. They need to excite gamers and restore the faith many has lost in them, and what better way to do that than to do what gamers have been craving for.
 
Buy the Oculus Rift Company, make it Xbox One / Windows? exclusive, as it did with Bungie/Halo CE, use the Kinect+O to detect correct motion tracking.

SKU:
- Kinectless
- Xbox+Kinect
- Xbox+Kinect+O
 
Bojanglez said:
  • New box design (slicker than PS4)
    [*]Make Kinect optional
    [*]Drop price below PS4
    [*]Make XBL Gold as competitive with content as PS+
    [*]Announce true exclusives, IP owned by MS themselves.

I can't see many of these happening though.

Oh and bring all the benefits of going "all digital" to the consumer. Cheaper digital games, Game renting, game trading, game sharing. Do something Sony hasn't done yet.
Click to expand...

I agree with everything except he first point.

Xbox Live Gold needs to provide more value or at least match PSN+. Two free games a month that you can buy for $5 is laughable. At this point I'm letting my Gold account run out and do not plan to renew...I'm just not getting the bang for my buck as I would be with PSN+. With Microsoft's "research" of the market, they should know that gamers are more informed these days.
 
If the rumor about Halo 2 Anniversary launching on the same day that the original did is true, they absolutely need to Have Peter Moore reveal the date with the same tattoo. Back at E3 2004 he even made a joke about the tattoo not having the year on it, so it would be perfect to do it again.
 
ZehDon said:
As someone who was with the Xbox from the beginning, but jumped ship for the PS4, I actually sat and thought about the OP for a little bit. And the truth is, from my perspective, they simply can't. Microsoft are still feeling the pain of the reveal, the DRM, and the solid year of terrible PR. Even if Microsoft pulled off their greatest E3 ever, all it would do is essentially wipe that away and give them a clean slate to start from.

To achieve their best "E3 Ever" they'd need:
  • Kinect's Killer App.
  • Keep Kinect and drop the price by US$150.00
  • Several new IPs that all look amazing.
  • Remove the media features from behind the XBLG pay-wall
  • An amazing Halo 5 demo
  • Banjo-Kazooie 3
  • An on-stage apology for the attempted DRM

And I don't believe we're going to get a single one of those. I suspect Microsoft's big guns will be the Halo 2 remake, Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break. And a teaser for Halo 5. No price drop. No Kinect removal. But maybe three months of XBLG in the box instead.
Click to expand...

Yeah everything you say sounds good.
Removing kinect is a tricky issue... Atm I don't see any worth in it, but at the same time, I don't want to be without it. If they just drop the price with kinect, seems better. Feels a bit arrogant of MS to charge for the kinect and just believe them when they say "Its worth it", despite see nothing of use of it game related, if they're willing to take the cost of proving kinect is worth it, they can go for it.
On stage appology of DRM too for sure, it annoys me they still don't understand what they did wrong, they're still all for it actually, only removed it because of fear of sales, even if they appologise not sure I can believe it, but depends on wording I guess and any actions they'll do to "prove it"
 
I think MS has already written off Xbox internally. The sales of their biggest moneyhat Titanfall don't seem to be earthshattering so... I doubt E3 will be that big for MS.
 
Announce that their the publisher for Devils Third.

Honestly.

I don't have an Xbox One but if they announced they had the exclusive on Itagaki's "masterpiece" then I'd buy one.
 
Well going by what they have said, they still have 8 AAA exclusives to announce and atleast 3 of them are supposed to be new IP's.

But that's if you don't count Halo 2 remake, and Forza Horizon 2.

To tell you the truth if all these are announced for next year, then it will just be a meh conference to me. However if something new is announced for release this year out of left field then it could be great.
 
Good lord people are expecting a bit much in the way of price drops. If there's any (without unbundling Kinect) then it'll be like $50 max.
 
- announce that Oculus Rift is coming to Xbox One and is using Kinect for tracking the player in the room (yeah I know, the latency would be bad but maybe they can sort this out somehow)
- OR announce the AR glasses thing but it has to be non-gimmicky
- Halo 5, Quantum Break and Horizon 2 as graphical showcases
- Halo 2 Anniversary
- Something like 1 vs. 100
- Surprise announcement of a new IP
 
Bundle a PS4 with every X1, a Ruffian Crackdown that's not been rushed, Rare allowed to make whatever games they like, unbundled Kinect, Fallout 4 exclusive.
 
They'd have to change their philosophy about what a console should be about, doubt that will happen so i don't expect much from Microsoft. There might be finaly some games i'd like to play and a halo2 remaster is something i really want to see.
There is not much they can do in my opionion, Rare people made clear in interviews that they like the kinect route so i expect nothing from them.

I'm not convinced in any exclusivity on Xbox One, even if they announce Alan Wake 2 i would not 'jump in' because that's probably on steam 1 or 2 years later.

They have a big image problem in my view.
 
SkullplateMurray said:
Halo 2 Remake
Forza Horizon 2
Crackdown 3
Sunset Overdrive
Quantum Break
Fable Legends
New Viva Pinata
New Gears
Star Wars Battlefront timed exclusive
Click to expand...

itqlCtXuIq3B1.gif
 
sn00zer said:
So Sony is currently leading in sales, is cheaper, and just announced VR. MS has one hell of a mountain to climb, so what to you could make MS knock it out of this park this E3?

-Exclusives, exclusives, exclusives.....and I dont mean paid exclusives, or exclusive content, or timed exclusive, or also on PC. I mean exclusive only on XB1
-Rare game that isnt Kinect related.....basically letting Rare do what they want...would be a great cold opener with a new Banjo Kazooie or something
-Sunset Overdive basically being the next Crackdown...or hell a new Crackdown would be cool
-A Watch_Dogs 2012 moment where a game leaks only the title, and literally nothing is known about it....a "One more thing" moment so to speak where a game just comes out of left field and blows everyone away
-$100 price drop or $150 drop with Kinectless SKU
Click to expand...

Whatever the X1 does, it would not have 8 GB GDDR5. It's time they had their games at full 1080p60 like PS4 does and drop the price by 100 euros. Also, 1-2 huge, true exclusives would help a lot. That is all i can think of that is realistic.

On a wilder scenario, MS would have to present their own VR headset like Sony did 2 days ago
 
maybe the wrong place to ask op. Your just going to get people saying drop the price to $100 and keep kinect plus a free game etc.

Heres what they need to do

- Announce pack ins of kinect sports + a choice of DR3/Forza/Ryse/maybe titanfall? for all Xbox's launched in tier 2 countries in september

-Show Quantum Break: has to be coming this fall or very early 2015. Cant have a huge delay

-Show Sunset overdrive: Has to be a compelling open world game

-Forza Horizon 2: if the rumors from ntkrnl were true, this should be the easiest sell

-Halo 2 anni: no hal 4 multiplayer. Gotta be a port of the og mp

-Show some indie love. Below a few other things

-Fable Legends gameplay trailer

-phantom dust/ viva pinata reveal etc. Both of these should have some kind of kinect implementation

- lower xbl gold to $5/month plus GFG

-possible gears announcement ?

- 1 japanese exclusive

- They usually show a 3rd party game from EA or Ubi at their conference ( possibly The division or battlefront)

- Halo 5 extended teaser ( halo 2 anni should begin the show and this end it)

-Finally, announce game pack ins for the us and other already established markets. Maybe a price drop of $50, but probably just keep the $500 tag

-Kinect stays
 
- KI was a nice start at bringing old titles back to live now please do the same with other Rare titles such as Banjo Threeie, Kameo 2 and Conker.
- Announce Lost Odyssey 2/Blue Dragon 2.
- (Tease a) New IP.
- Show some footage of QB, Sunset Overdrive
- Announce one of the following for this year: Halo Trilogy anniversary, Halo Wars 2, Halo 5. And do a live demo of it.
- Reveal some details about the Halo TV project and other TV projects.
- Announce an official price drop to €350/€400.
- Announce a revision of XBL Gold.

Damigos said:
Excuse the silly question but from where is that gif ? I mean which tv series, which actor etc
Click to expand...
Actor is Steve Carell in the TV serie "The Office"
 
Going to have to be games games and more games, although their biggest hitters can't be FPS FPS and more FPS otherwise they're preaching to the choir and is going to tightcast themselves to the genre like the original Xbox was.

Roboleon said:
A cheaper kinect-less SKU.
Click to expand...

I was thinking, maybe MS might hold onto Kinect until they come up with their own VR, saying that if they do, that won't alleviate the price difference either.
 
- Price drop
- Kinektless SKU or a showcase of software that justifies the inclusion of kinect
- showcase of great exclusive titles
- Reworking of XBL Gold to make the value proposition better / getting rid of the stupid paywall on apps
 
Get rid of the paywall on Xbox live.

Let rare be rare again (they kept the 64 alive for me and I got a 360 because of them).
 
Exclusives, lots of them (ranging the entire spectrum from indie to AAA). It's better to give more time on stage to an exclusive than to have EA or Ubisoft come out and use 10 minutes on a multi-platform game. You are behind the 8 ball, you need to establish differences, that means exclusives

Price drop, or SKU without Kinect

Games with Gold overhaul, must be much more competitive with PS+

Announce pre-ordering, and pre-loading for upcoming digital games.

Announce credit program for digital "trade-ins"


Oh, and something both Sony and MS should stop bothering with, paying for and touting "exclusive content" that is worthless and would have been cut from the game (I'm looking at you Ubisoft games)
 
The leak by nklr or whatever really lowered my expectations quite a bit. I don't care about:
- A new Forza Horizon
- A Halo by 343
- A new Crackdown
- Screw Fable

That stuff does nothing for me. I want to see something brand new and out of the box from this company:

- AAA platformer or adventure game either from a internal or 3rd party studio.(extremely unlikely)
- Insomniacs game blows us away.(possible but who knows with them)
- Halo 2 with the classic MP of Halo 2 and not the garbage in H4. (PLEASE!!!)

Its looking relatively unlikely from my viewpoint that I will be blown away but MS typically do a better job getting me fired up than Sony at E3 so who knows. It will be a pivotal one for me though. Its where I am going to determine if I am keeping this box or not.
 
Announcing a Kinectless SKU for $350 (with a bundled game) is really the baseline for them getting back into the fight.
 
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