E3 2015: Microsoft Xbox Conference Summary and Trailers

Bonnie Ross from 343 Industries opened the Xbox E3 2015 press conference with a Halo 5 Guardians demo. Many flashy lights. Much dialogue from the co-op team.

Halo 5 Guardians

• Campaign: Built for seamless drop-in drop-out co-op play.
• PvP: Warzone mode has 24 players + AI adversaries.

Recore

• New game from Keiji Inafune (Lost Planet, Dead Rising) and the makers of Metroid Prime
• Xbox One Exclusive, first-party title.

Backwards Compatibility with Xbox 360 Games

Phil Spencer came out to announce Xbox One backward compatibility with Xbox 360 games. Mike Ybarra, Head of Platform Engineering provided a few more details.

• Playable natively on the Xbox One.
• Over 100 titles with more to come.
• Available this summer for everyone. Free!
• You can take screenshots of the 360 games with the Xbox One voice command.
• Insert your 360 game disc and then download the game for Xbox One.

Fallout 4

Todd Howard again, expanding on yesterday’s massive Fallout 4 announcement.

• There’s a laser musket.
• PC mods can be transferred and shared to Xbox One
• Fallout 3 will be bundled with Fallout 4 on Xbox One

Forza Motorsport 6

• It’s an Xbox One exclusive (of course).
• Henry Ford III anounced that the Ford GT is coming to Forza 6.
• 26 destinations.
• 450+ cars.
• 24 car multiplayer.

Dark Souls 3

• There’s a big stony kingly bloke.
• Can you tell I don’t play Dark Souls?

Tom Clancy’s The Division

• It’s an action-RPG.
• Xbox One players exclusively get access to the first beta.

Rainbow Six: Siege

• It’s still a thing.
• Players will get Rainbow Six Vegas and its sequel for free.

Indie Games

• Video montage of various games below.
• Steve Gaynor introduced Fullbright Studio’s new game Tacoma, set in a Lunar Transfer Station. Explore another strangely empty environment. This time the dismebodied voice-over talks to you.
• Derek Bradley from Aurora44 introduced Ashen.
• Sherida Halatoe from tiger & squid introduced Beyond Eyes. It’s a story of hope, following a child in a pastel-coloured world.
• Cuphead: it still looks like a Felix the Cat cartoon on drugs.

Xbox Game Preview

• It’s like Steam Early Access only you get a free trial first in case it’s a buggy, unplayable mess.
• Launching with four games: The Long Dark, Shelter, Elite Dangerous and Day Z.

Ion

• Dean Hall apparently wants a game that isn’t a game.
• His new thing is called Ion, set in space.
• They didn’t show any gameplay.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Brian Horton, Game Director at Crystal Dynamics introduced.

• It’s coming “Holiday 2015”.
• Lara and Jonah struggle against the wind on a snowy ledge before climbing a clearly-marked wall of ice, falling off and running across yet more ledges through dramatic set-pieces.
• More jumps followed by QTE grabs.
• I think I saw a tomb. Or at least, a large temple of some kind.

Rare

• Rare Replay: A collection of 30 games from Rare, to commemorate their 30th Anniversary. Banjo Kazooie, Viva Pinata, Crash Bandicoot and more.
• Sea of Thieves is a new game. Piratey naval battles in a co-op world.

HoloLens/Minecraft

• Saxs Persson demonstrated Minecraft on HoloLens.
• You can use HoloLens to view your Minecraft world from different perspectives.
• Project the world onto a flat surface, lift it up and look underground, or play in normal first-person, projected onto a wall.
• It’s basically witchcraft if it’s as stable as it looked.
• I want one.

The demo video trailer isn’t live yet but I’ll try to include it when it becomes available.

Gears 4

• Xbox One Exclusive (of course).
• It’s bloody dark.
• New team and monsters.

Other Stuff

• Gigantic is a colourful game coming to Windows 10 and Xbox. I’ll look for a trailer
• Fable Legends: Xbox One and Windows 10 games are cross-compatible. We already knew that.
• The Xbox One controller will be bundled with Oculus Rift.
• Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2 is coming in Spring 2016.

See all our E3 2015 posts here.