-
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.
USGamer | Revisiting Xbox E3 2014: Remembering All The Games That Died
- Thread starter benny_a
- Start date
Neuromancer
Member
It was definitely a bad E3 for them in retrospect. I am still really bummed out that Lionhead was shut down. Legends was always a bad idea in my view, I would rather have seen their pitch for Fable 4:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-05-12-lionhead-the-inside-story
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Rockstar's Agent? That game is vaporware.
SprachBrooks
Member
I believed
This shit was just embarrassing. Can't believe the way they venerated the guy as some sort of second-coming Xbox saviour. Hilarious to watch the fallout now though.
I think most people had "moved on" from 2013 and saw XBox as trending upwards by the end of 2016. Strong momentum from the One S and Backwards Compatible as well as some well received exclusives (Gears 4, Forza Horizon 3) with Scorpio on the horizon. But this has just thrown everything into question and kind of reminded people why they were so hesitant on XBox from the Kinect era onwards.
I really think now they need a Scorpio event prior to E3 (probably April-May) to rebuild some of that momentum. They have nothing for the next few months besides Halo Wars 2.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
We got Lost Odyssey for free. His sins have been absolved.
Thanks for linking this article. I missed it at the time, very interesting. This is really sad what has become of the Xbox brand over the last few years of the 360 and pretty much all of the Xbox One's lifetime.
Sony and Nintendo has had plenty of misses in their first party games in this gen but this is getting really to look worse and worse for Microsoft.
By the way, The Xbox One S is still a console that offers some unique features at it's price point and still has plenty of good games. It's shame that it's still underpowered though (I think people still overlook this).
I can be perfectly good console for certain individuals, but the fanboys who care about this have got to be losing their shit right now, lol.
I can be perfectly good console for certain individuals, but the fanboys who care about this have got to be losing their shit right now, lol.
Captain Zyrain
Member
For certain individuals? What is THAT supposed to mean? LOL
individuals that have no self-respect or class obviously
therealbigrich
Member
So 3 canceled games from 2014 E3 . Might as well shut all of Xbox down at this point lol
Learned Xbottedness.
It's from the study of psychology of the GAF.
The situation is: You play Xbox all your life.
Then you are shown the Playstations.
The brain will dampen the Playstation pleasure signals so while in actuality you enjoy the Playstation more you will say and also believe you like Xbox more.
The higher brain functions overrides the lower pleasure brain functions, due to the history you have believing in Spencer.
Please nobody be upset. This is a riff on the Pepsi & Co Baylor University study.
therealbigrich
Member
So looking at those games Fable legends , Scalebound and phantom dust ...Maybe I don't know enough about the games but they all seem to be RPG based . Seems like the only thing telling about this is Xbox feels like RPG based games won't sell on Xbox
Shooters and western RPGs are Xbox gamers' bread and butter.
therealbigrich
Member
And racing games .
I don't know about bread & butter, but I also don't believe that to be the reason.
They were promoting Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Dragon Age Inquisition and are allegedly re-making Phantum Dust.
Those released games sold well.
And Forza. Forza and Killer Instinct have been the most consistent things for Xbox this gen.
I think it was really sad when they blew up Black Tusk's plans so they could only work on Gears. There had to have been some pretty disappointed people in Vancouver when they basically lost their identity from no fault of their own to become the Coalition.
It seems like they did a pretty good job with Gears but that was bullshit imo.
Pancakes R Us
Member
What's there to be confused about. This is a gaming forum full of fanboys. I'm one of them.
Captain Zyrain
Member
I don't know. I feel like E3 2014 was probably planned a bunch before any of the shakeup, without much room to maneuver. If they were really sincere about restructuring/etc then it makes sense that these would get canceled/postponed/etc.
I mean I don't know how much Phil Spencer does things differently compared to Mattrick, but in sports when a new coach comes in, they typically fire all the other subordinates and bring in their own people. I don't imagine that happened here.. but pet projects under one leadership might not be the same under someone else.
My personal preference, and I said it in another thread, Scalebound looked really bad the few times they showed it off, I'm not worried about it being canceled. Crackdown 3, from the limited stuff we've seen, LOOKS like it could be cool. If they go ahead and cancel that, then I'll be sad.
I mean I don't know how much Phil Spencer does things differently compared to Mattrick, but in sports when a new coach comes in, they typically fire all the other subordinates and bring in their own people. I don't imagine that happened here.. but pet projects under one leadership might not be the same under someone else.
My personal preference, and I said it in another thread, Scalebound looked really bad the few times they showed it off, I'm not worried about it being canceled. Crackdown 3, from the limited stuff we've seen, LOOKS like it could be cool. If they go ahead and cancel that, then I'll be sad.
OmegaSmash
Member
The Wii.
slightconfuse
Banned
Had no idea project spark even came out
Dash_Riprock
Member
What confounds me most is that certainly Spencer and the rest of MS saw Sony's playbook so they KNEW how you turn around an unpopular (in the US) console and make people love it again. Build more studios , make new first party games outside established franchises, keep supporting them even if the first installment underperforms. Genre diversity, give something for everyone, be on friendly terms with devs, etc, etc.
But instead, when the time came to save the Xbox One after launch, MS instead chose to just double down on HaloForzaGears and were content to moneyhat a couple third party exclusives. The few new first party games made were only given one shot to be a megahit otherwise they were dumped. And perhaps worst of all, they earned long-lasting enmity from indie devs with their bullshit parity clause that Spencer still has implemented. Basically every they did everything wrong even after seeing how to do it right.
There is a nice article about this point on gamesindudstry.biz about this topic.
Microsoft's chequebook warfare is bound to fail
Success in the console industry requires more than deep pockets; paying for exclusivity is no substitute for nurturing great games and services
Unknown?
Member
They probably don't care because they have been selling well in the US despite having so few exclusive games and they know they can fool casuals here with marketing.
This is very true! Good article.
It's crazier when you consider Spencer kept talking about how he wanted to foster new IP.
But everything he says and everything Xbox is doing is basically the complete opposite.
What I mean by bread and butter, if you ask any Xbox fan what are his or her favorite "Xbox" games it's bound to be in one of those two categories. From Halo, Gears, CoD, Bioshock to Kotor, Morrowind, Mass Effect, Fable etc.
Xbox was always an extention of western pc gamer philosophy for the most part. A brand new shooter (like a Shangheist) and a large RPG (like Obsidian's canceled game or a Fable 4) should have been a no brainer from the get go to excite your base. Now all they have is Halo and Gears with no Fable in sight. I think people forget Fable 2 and 3 sold pretty well.
WhiskerFrisker
Member
"Xbox had the best E3 in 2014"
Spazgadget
Member
That's a pretty insightful article.
What's puzzling to me is why, as the article states, MS doesn't use their deep pockets to really nurture some talent in their own stables more often. Surely they can't have seen any significant ROI on the huge amount of money they must have spent to make RotTR "exclusive" for a year. And if they're not making tons of money back on the expenditure anyway, why not invest in a new creative studio and make something special and build their brand?
semiconscious
Member
so: the year of horrible console announcement, followed by the year of horrible software announcement? 
...
...
Papacheeks
Banned
Because they are literally bleeding money. They have been since after the 2013 debacle, in 6 months after launch they unbundled kinect, dropped the price to 399 and shit canned a lot of tv/entertainment sectors they had spent millions on especially the Halo tv series they were going to have. Add in the money they spent on exclusive third party games, and on their software engineers to get the OS in shape after the debacle not hard to see.
Then when your games you used your checkbook for dont sell your left with money you wont be getting back. The only way they were selling lots of consoles was discounting and fire sales during holiday season in 2014-2015. They are straight up not profitable, and when you have games like scalebound, legends, failed projects like kinect and it's games along with hololens not hard to see the giant money pit the division has created.
Tranqueris
Banned
Speaking of Microsoft's past decisions, did they ever change their minds on that indie parity clause that was screwing over smaller developers? Or did everyone just stop caring about it?
DriftingSpirit
Member
That stuff was part of the equation for PS3 but Sony's worldwide market played a big part too.
Even if MS did/does those things, I don't know if it would guarantee anything. MS just has a ton of work to do if they want to really turn things around. I just don't think they care of enough to do it because of how little Xbox really means for the entire company.
Unknown?
Member
The division surely doesn't have the same loose leash that they did before, it's getting tighter. The deal for Tomb Raider was a huge waste and even with that they only had three big exclusives that whole year. Was pretty pathetic but people believe that "best lineup in Xbox History" bull crap. I mean not people here but the general public will eat it up.
Chaos2Frozen
Member
R.I.P to the cancelled projects.
MS E3 2017 needs to deliver software wise and deliver hard.
Why? To cancel them 3 years later?
I wouldn't trust MS's E3 conference too much anymore.
Outside of Phantom Dust/Scalebound/Fable/Spark, it's also important to recognize Recore, which quite literally came out with major red flags of being shoved out before it was done cooking.
Scalebound was basically a last straw in questioning how anyone can conceivably take Microsoft's word for anything other than a numbered Halo, Gears or Forza.
Scalebound was basically a last straw in questioning how anyone can conceivably take Microsoft's word for anything other than a numbered Halo, Gears or Forza.
As you should not. But delivering hard software wise with extensive gameplay demos is the best thing I believe they can do at the moment. To actually show people they still got compelling playable titles, to inspire confidence once more in them. And to make sure to deliver on shown titles by releasing the damn games.
Well that's what happens when you try to make a suit into a saviour.
He's just a talking PR head that people pin their hopes to.
Can't really blame them at this point, but still.
Okay, this got me
KingdomHeartsFan
Member
I probably woulda bought two of those three games if Microsoft actually finished them :/.
Technically TLG was cancelled and resurrected. Lets give MS 8 years to be fair then ha
TLG was put on hold until the PS4 dev kits were out. It was never canceled.
bigboss370
Member
I wonder what is honestly going on with Crackdown 3...it was THE game that was supposed to fulfil the promise of the all powerful cloud, and how the cloud actually makes xbox one more powerful.
I'm assuming, but I don't think their claims of mass in-game destruction only possible by the cloud was fully developed.
After all, if the cloud offered so much extra power...why do we need scorpio?
edit:
That being said, I really just want Crackdown 3 already. Make the destruction possible offline on the system itself, don't worry about the cloud promise. Just release the game.
I'm assuming, but I don't think their claims of mass in-game destruction only possible by the cloud was fully developed.
After all, if the cloud offered so much extra power...why do we need scorpio?
edit:
That being said, I really just want Crackdown 3 already. Make the destruction possible offline on the system itself, don't worry about the cloud promise. Just release the game.
DriftingSpirit
Member
Nah.