• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Poll: What was the best showcase in 2023? (get your score cards out!)

Which showcase do you think was the best?

  • Playstation Showcase 2023

    Votes: 10 3.4%

  • Summer Game Fest 2023 Opening Live

    Votes: 27 9.3%

  • Xbox Games Showcase & Starfield Direct

    Votes: 211 72.5%

  • Ubisoft Forward

    Votes: 35 12.0%

  • Capcom showcase

    Votes: 8 2.7%
  • Total voters
    291
  • Poll closed .
supernova8

supernova8

Banned
Of course we still have the Xbox Extended Showcase later today (13th June) but I personally think we've seen enough to be able to judge (plus Nintendo hasn't even announced a Direct, so tough shit team red).

I've ordered them chronologically to keep it simple.

For me it's a close call between Xbox and Ubisoft, but I'm giving it to Ubisoft.

Playstation Showcase: Kinda anticlimax reveal for MGS3 remake and then the same-same kinda-over-stayed-its-welcome Spiderman 2 footage at the end. Looking back now, I wonder why they decided to do their event so early. Maybe they knew they had nothing to show and wanted to just get it out of the way or something? Obviously they have lots left in the tank... maybe we'll get another show later in the year or something after Spidey 2 is out?
6.9/10

Summer Game Fest: it was so forgettable I can barely remember anything except Mortal Kombat gameplay and Nicolas Cage looking like he was just there for the paycheck.
5.6/10

Xbox Showcase & Starfield: Lots of good stuff. I agree that there was a clear lack of actual gameplay (aside from Starfield obviously) but I was glad to see that Fable is actually making progress. Also lots of stuff coming to Game Pass. They definitely delivered. I think I finally got moderately excited for Starfield after rewatching the deep dive (I'm not usually a Bethesda game lover).
8.6/10
edit: OK I just watched the extended showcase aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand... I'm actually going to penalize them 0.1 points because they wasted my fucking time lol (seriously Hellblade.. 4 years on why are they still trying to impress me with motion capture? Rather, why are they still doing motion capture?!)

Ubisoft Forward: This was the only event where it felt like they actually wanted to show us the damn game(s). Surprisingly deep dive look at Avatar (looks gorgeous), the new Prince of Persia game looks great (we saw it at SGF sure but the deep dive finally showed me why I should give a damn). I don't give a shit about XDefiant but I just went to make a cup of tea at the time (lol) so whatever. Skull & Bones..... hmmm I mean it doesn't look as bad is it did last time. AssCrack Mirage actually looks great, glad they moved back to the desert-ish setting. and finally.. fucking Star Wars Outlaws. Fucking hell they almost out-Starfielded Starfield - OK bit of an exaggeration but it does look great. Again just pleasantly surprised by the fact that they provided a proper gameplay walkthrough.
9.0/10

Capcom: Decentish showcase overall (I mean it's Capcom, they're not massive) given that they probably don't have a lot to show now that their heavy hitters are already out, but still funny that they just recycled the same Path of the Goddess trailer, why even bother? (maybe because of the Game Pass deal).
6.3/10

Edit after seeing just under 100 votes

Looks like the overwhelming majority of people think Xbox knocked it out of the park.
Congrats to the green rats!
 
Last edited:
Riky

Riky

$MSFT
Sony 2/10

Only Marathon interested me and that's coming to Xbox, Spiderman looked last gen with terrible AI.

Summer Games Fest 5/10

Nice variety of games, MK1 looked decent but nothing that really wowed me.

Xbox and Starfield 9/10

Amazing line up of new IP and next gen games, Starfield looked like the GOAT and they basically own the western RPG market. Perfect Dark would have made it 10/10

Ubisoft 7/10

Star Wars and Assassin's Creed look great, just wary of major downgrades that the company is known for.

Capcom 5/10

Decent but known quantities.
 
SaucyJack

SaucyJack

Member
On what basis are we judging?

The show, as a show, at face value? The Xbox one was a bit better.

So Xbox -> PlayStation -> Ubisoft -> Capcom

However, if you're rating based on showing Gameplay of games that are coming sooner rather than later, then both PlayStation and Xbox kinda sucked. Xbox cinematic trailers for first party games were no doubt better than PlayStation's, but to be fair to Sony they've pretty much released all the games they announced 3 or 4 years ago already.

If we're basing it on games that are actually releasing soon then ...

Ubisoft -> Capcom -> Xbox/PlayStation
 
cireza

cireza

Member
Xbox was strong and having a long, in depth presentation of Starfield, which is coming soon, was excellent.

They really should do the same thing next year, with whatever their biggest game will be at the moment.
 
Last edited:
LordBlodgett

LordBlodgett

Member
This was much closer than expected for me. Both Microsoft and Ubisoft put on an excellent show this year
Sony 4/10

Spider man was pretty damned good. I loved the first and this looks even better. Sure the water looked atrocious, but the gameplay is a blast. Unfortunately, not much else this year. Everyone was excited about Marathon, but a pure CGI teaser tells me nothing.

Summer Games Fest 6.5/10

MK1, Space Marines, and Alan Wake 2 all interested me. All of this trailers also showed some gameplay. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth might also be great, but the trailer did not impress that much. There was also a ton of junky mobile games, almost no deep dives, and we didn't hear from any of the developer.

Xbox and Starfield 10/10

Xbox finally showed something! Looking at just the first 90 minutes I was excited by Fable, Avowed, Flight Sim, and Clockwork Revolution. Those are just the first party! The third party games and many of the Gamepass were just icing on the cake. All of that would have been a 7/10 show, with the major issue being a lack of gameplay. Then came Starfield............Oh my God, Starfield. This looks like it could be the game of the generation. Every little part built up on the next, and over 30 minutes it just got better and better. I have not been this hyped for a game since Red Dead Redemption 2.

Ubisoft 8/10

Without Starfield this would have beat Microsoft's showcase easily. Avatar looks amazing from a graphical perspective, and it had decent looking gameplay. Assassin's Creed looks to be more dense than it has ever been, besides looking gorgeous. Star Wars Outlaws looked like it captured the star Wars feel, although the gameplay looked just ok. Last, but not least, Prince of Persia actually looked really good when it wasn't a weird rap trailer.

Capcom 3/10

Really not great this year. The best game has already been announced at the Xbox show. I did appreciate how they delayed Pragmata, but that doesn't make a great show.
 
C

crackajack

Member
Where is Devolver?
[x] Devolver

I don't even liked their few games that much, but I like their insane format and that they are going with stuff like that for several years now. If you do prerecorded stuff, at least make it entertaining and not a boring and void of passion trailer sequence. Also their trailer directive appears to be: a little prerendered stuff and follow with actual in game gameplay scenes, which is how any announcement should be. No fakery of coming some time in the future BS just to pretend to have a huge lineup coming, they just tease a little the overall tone and then immediately follow with what we actually get.
Next is Ubisoft, which was not good like old Sony with orchestra and blockbuster announcements, but at least it was an actual show. And I might like the PoP game out of all new announcements the most, even though the first trailer with that weirdo hero and jarring music choice was a total false start. But the gameplay looks nice.

Overall nothing was ultrabad like Kochmedia's cringefest or Konami's old conferences, but E3 hypes that live up to to the expectations are a thing of the past and all we get are trailer compilations that have almost zero entertainment value in themselves, I see no point calling those even a show if I could just watch those whenever. Theyare also totally worthless as a look into the future when much of it is CGI. They, Sony and MS, should just do monthly or quarterly trailer reels if that's what they actually do is and not act like any of that was a successor to previous gens' shows.
 
Drizzlehell

Drizzlehell

Banned
The only reason to give Ubisoft Forward such a high score was because it reminded me of good-old-fashioned awkwardness and unintentional lulz of E3 conferences. It wasn't really that funny, though. Mostly it was just cringe and out-of-touch corporate heads feeding us with bullshit, as per usual. The only interesting part about it were the reveals for Star Wars and new Assassin's Creed.

Xbox had a much better show overall because they focused on showing actual games, a lot of which looked awesome, instead of wasting our time with musical numbers and some dweebs who could barely speak English.
 
Last edited:
Griffon

Griffon

Member
The last thing I expected was Ubisoft to have good stuff to show. But they did.

Will their games be good on release? That's another question.
 
Last edited:
Danjin44

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Japanese games…..10/10 they saved showcase in 2023 for me.
perfect-score-bruno-mars.gif
 
Gaelyon

Gaelyon

Gold Member
I missclick on summer game fest (which was ok) but really meant X-box show (they came back from a very low point), though the Ubi show was surprisingly great.
 
U

ungalo

Member
I guess Xbox, but really it's actually just the Starfield direct.

We've had some cool games announced or showed, but it was scattered among all the different shows i think.

The Xbox show was obviously the most packed (a third party publisher like Ubisoft can't compete with a show where you can potentially find every publisher + first party games so that's not really fair) but i didn't like the way they presented a lot of their games, that was disappointing.
 
DenchDeckard

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Xbox by an absolute behemoth of a mile....but man, ubisoft...thank you so much for Star wars!

Next gen has finally arrived, it only took more or less three years....now we are seeing the real games!
 
Mr Hyde

Mr Hyde

Member
Microsoft had the best showcase with Xbox. Lots of interesting games, both first party and third party. There were many times during the show I was frustrated because I wanted to see more of the games, which is a big plus in my book. Fable, Path of the Goddess, Jusant, Clockwork Revolution, Awowed, Hellblade 2 all caught my attention. And of course, the highlight of the show, Starfield, which looks like it could be game of the generation. Xbox took the crown this year no doubt. Bright future ahead.

Second place I would put Ubisoft. Star Wars Outlaws was jaw dropping. I enjoyed everything about it and I want to play it right now. Avatar looks cool with amazing graphics but the IP is somewhat meh to me. Good to see Ubi with a good showing. I know they get a lot of hate here but I like them for the most part since they do put out the occasional banger.

Third place is Sony. They showed a lot of great third party games, such as Dragon's Dogma 2 and Alan Wake 2, but the first party GaaS push is off putting for me. I hate this direction Sony is going in, and that's made me feeling quite cold to the brand for now. Spiderman 2 looks cool but it's not enough. I'm still a PlayStation fan and always will be, but I'm gonna search elsewhere for the moment for my big singleplayer experiences (hello Xbox!)

Fourth is Summer game fest. I like Geoff Keighley and what he is doing for the industry. He tries to put out entertaining shows with a lot of exciting announcements but Summer game fest was very mediocre. Outside FF7 Rebirth, it didn't do much for me. Game Awards is much better.

Last place is Capcom. What a snoozefest. Hideaki Itsuno talking Dragon's Dogma 2 made it endurable, because that game looks like pure fire 🔥 but the rest was crap with IPs I don't care about at all. Capcom is still the GOAT developer right now. They always bring some bangers out. RE engine is the best thing that's happened for the company since the OG Resident Evil got birthed in the mid 90s.
 
Last edited:
supernova8

supernova8

Banned
SaucyJack said:
On what basis are we judging?

The show, as a show, at face value? The Xbox one was a bit better.

So Xbox -> PlayStation -> Ubisoft -> Capcom

However, if you're rating based on showing Gameplay of games that are coming sooner rather than later, then both PlayStation and Xbox kinda sucked. Xbox cinematic trailers for first party games were no doubt better than PlayStation's, but to be fair to Sony they've pretty much released all the games they announced 3 or 4 years ago already.

If we're basing it on games that are actually releasing soon then ...

Ubisoft -> Capcom -> Xbox/PlayStation
Click to expand...
Good question, I think I just tried to judge them on whether they met, fell short of, or exceeded my expectations for the particular show and then tried to look at all of them together to decide what I liked the most.

I gave Ubisoft such a high score because I feel they knocked it out of the park with Avatar, Star Wars, and even AssCrack Mirage (and strangely that Prince of Persia game after seeing all the crazy time bending and combos you can do), when I was honestly expecting their event to be absolute garbage.

For Xbox, I was kinda silently expecting/hoping for something amazing. I'd say it was "great" but not quite "amazing". They could have had an "amazing" out of me if they showed more gameplay but I'm willing to nudge them up to an "excellent" if they show a lot more at the extended thing - actually I'll add that to my OP.
 
slade

slade

Member
I only watched the Sony one and my main complaint with it was that they didn't show enough first party games.

I was going to watch the Xbox show but forgot about it on the very day it aired. From what I've seen so far, their first party offerings still pale in comparison to what I'm getting this year from Sony and I'm only getting Spider-man 2 from them.
 
poodaddy

poodaddy

Member
Xbox, but I was still disappointed in there being so little gameplay. Any trailer without gameplay is absolutely useless to me, so essentially all of these showcases have been disappointing for me personally, but yeah Xbox definitely had the best one though the bar is quite low this year.
 
diffusionx

diffusionx

Gold Member
You missed the PC Gaming Show OP, and don't laugh - it was actually pretty good. Better than the SGF.

Anyway by far the best thing I saw in any of these was the Starfield Direct.
 
L

Labadal

Member
Avowed
Clockwork Redemption
Like A Dragon 8
Metaphor
Path of the Godess
Persona 3R
Persona 5T
Statfield

Eight games that I am interested in. Xbox showcase was the one worth watching the most.

I missed Ubisoft, and Capcom shows.
 
SF Kosmo

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
I really can't remember when one party won so decisively as Xbox did this year. Looks like the poll backs that up.

To some extent this is because the others ceded it to them.
  • Sony clearly held back, and treated it more like a Nintendo direct than a real hype event. I don't doubt that they have some incredible games in the pipe, as they always do, but this was a conference of B-tier clones and cookie cutter bullshit followed by a presentation for Spider-Man that, while excellent, was no more or less than exactly what was expected.
  • Summer Game Fest was better than in years past but still not even a fraction of what we would expect from the E3 of old.
  • Ubisoft brought some heat, and very much treated it like an E3 conference. Some strong showings, but a single dev conference is still not going to compete with a big tent.
  • Capcom, lol whut
But Xbox had the most to lose. They're coming off a really bad couple years. Once Halo Infinite fizzled it's been nothing but delays and vast open spaces in the schedule, with small rays of light like Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush insufficient to distract from the high profile failure of Redfall.

And they pulled it off. They showed how all these acquisitions are going to pay off, how the drought is over and this fall marks the beginning of a string of high profile releases. They showed the value of Game Pass in a big way with some of the third party partnerships. Atlus/Sega showed a ton of great stuff.

And most importantly they showed that all the delays for Starfield are going to be worth it. That they weren't trying to salvage a broken game, that they were taking time to polish a potential game of the generation to perfection. We saw how graphics and combat and systems had been overhauled and upgraded and the game looks just incredible. Starfield has completely stolen the post conference conversation.
 
SF Kosmo

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
I can't remember a year where one party won so decisively, but Xbox ran away with it this year, and it's no surprise to me that the poll shows that.

To some extent this is because the competition ceded it to them.
  • Sony treated this more like a Nintendo Direct than the E3s of old. A lot of boring B-tier games and a deeper dive at their next upcoming AAA release, but little to no talk of the future beyond that. We know Sony has exciting stuff in the pipe, but they held back.
  • Summer Games Fest was the best it's ever been, but it still pales compared to the old E3 first party conferences.
  • Ubisoft brought their A-game and delivered a great conference with some interesting games, but there's only so much a single dev can show compared to the big tent shows.
  • Capcom, lol whut
But I don't want to short sell what Xbox did. They came into this at their lowest point. After Halo fizzled out they were left with a barren 2022 and the small rays of light in Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush were not enough to distract from the high profile failure of Redfall. Xbox really needed to show that all the drought is over, and these studios are going to be delivering exciting games one after another, and I think they did that.

They also made a great argument for Game Pass, and Sega/Atlus really got on board with some exciting stuff. Third party announcements from Ubi and Capcom and Cyberpunk added some sizzle as well.

But obviously the real story, at the end of the day, is Starfield. With the Redfall debacle and long delays, it's obvious people were worried that the game was struggling to come together. But MS showed us clearly that this extra time wasn't just being spent on triage, it's been going to polish. We saw massively improved combat, graphics, systems, and performance. And it worked. There's little doubt Starfield is the most anticipated game of 2023 now.

They showed a game that is a potential game of the year, game of the generation, and brand-defining tentpole. They showed they're finally ready to move on from relying on nostalgia for Halo and Gears and look to the future.
 
analog_future

analog_future

Resident Crybaby
  • Playstation - 3/10. Worst Showcase they've ever had
  • Summer Game Fest - 7/10. Perfectly solid third-party focused show, and in line with expectations of past SGF presentations
  • Xbox Games Showcase & Starfield Direct - Best Showcase Xbox has ever done. It was a solid 8.5/10 before the Starfield Direct, but a 9.5/10 after. Only thing missing was a "One More Thing..." mic drop reveal of something like Banjo Kazooie or whatever
  • Ubisoft Forward - Content was great, presentation was god awful. Still, excited for Avatar, Star Wars, and PoP. 7/10
  • Capcom - Somehow even worse than Playstation. 2/10
 
Last edited:
Fredrik

Fredrik

Member
Best: Microsoft.
Phenomenal because of Starfield. I still can’t understand how much they’ve put in there. Only negative for me was the bad beard shaders/texture, looked bad enough that I hope someone make a no-beard mod.
9/10

Almost as great: Ubisoft.
Avatar, Star Wars Outlaws, Prince of Persia. I loved everything I saw from those. The Crew Motorfest seemed fun too. Just hoping it’s not too much faked stuff that’ll be downgraded at launch.
8/10

I enjoyed Geoff’s show too because of FF7 Rebirth. I need to finish Remake asap to be ready for that.
And Capcom’s show had some cool stuff too.
7/10
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

  • Poll
Rate the Xbox Showcase 2023
5 6 7 8 9
440
20K
JackMcGunns replied
  • Poll
Xbox Games Showcase Announced for June 11 before the Starfield Show
News Platform 22 23 24 25 26
1K
60K
Mephisto40 replied
The Xbox Showcase was watched by nearly 2.4 million people
Community Platform
32
3K
feynoob replied
  • Poll
I Think It's Time For A Showcase Consolidation
Opinion Poll Event
12
860
thicc_girls_are_teh_best replied
Forbes: Xbox won the Game Awards 2023
Opinion 2 3 4 5
211
13K
Crayon replied
Top Bottom