Sony vs Microsoft, again
Sony and Microsoft have announced a whole bunch of new games at E3
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2015-06-17 01:48 GMT
Surprises galore: Horizon: Zero Dawn is an open world RPG featuring a female protagonist and robot dinosaurs
Sony opened its E3 2015 press conference with the biggest news of all, re-revealing The Last Guardian. From director Fumito Ueda, The Last Guardian was announced as a PS4 game for 2016. Guerrilla Games came on next to unveil Horizon: Zero Dawn, an open world RPG featuring a female protagonist and robot dinosaurs. This was followed by a new trailer for console exclusive Street Fighter V.
Big announcements kept coming as after the embarrassing moment at PSX last year, Final Fantasy VII Remake was officially announced to release first on PlayStation, and Shenmue III is up on kickstarter for PC and PS4. For the first time, Call of Duty: Black Ops III was shown at the Sony press conference at E3. They announced a partnership that ensured that from Black Ops III, map packs will launch first on PS4 for all Call of Duty games.
The show ended with a demo of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. It was an impressive visual showcase, drivable vehicles, our first look at Sully and a thrilling chase sequence. The highlights of the press conference were The Last Guardian re-reveal, Shenmue III kickstarter, gameplay demos of Uncharted 4 and Horizon: Zero Dawn, as well as the announcement of Final Fantasy VII: Remake. This was arguably their best press conference in the past few years; without any filler, featuring plenty of new and previously announced games, and a host of surprises.
The conference had a great balance of major announcements, first party demos and third party partnerships. The only things missing from the show were more first and second party games from known studios. We know Sony Bend, SSM, Quantic Dream and many others are working on new PS4 games, but they are too early in development to showcase. We are bound to see more of these games at the Paris Game Show and at PSX in December since Sony is skipping gamescom in 2015. Parth Bagaria
A holiday line-up: You can download Xbox 360 games from the Xbox Live store and play them on your Xbox One
Last Year at E3, Microsoft’s message was loud and clear – “Damage Control”. Thus, in an effort to turn the tides back in their favour, Phil Spencer took to the stage at this year’s E3 and unveiled things that, quite frankly, left the audience dumbstruck.
Topping our list of the Microsoft E3 conference round-up is the fact that now games will be natively backwards compatible on the Xbox One. Essentially, if the developers agree, you, the gamer, can download Xbox 360 games from the Xbox Live store and play them on your Xbox One. If you own the physical copy, all you have to do is insert the disk, and then you’ll be able to download the game from the store.
While last year, one could say that Microsoft gave indie developers the cold shoulder, this year, it’s a whole different story. The Xbox Game Previews offers something akin to Steam Early Access, the only difference here is that you actually get to try out the games and then decide whether you want to move into paid early access or not. This is a great opportunity for Indie Devs, who believe that they have a strong product, to showcase their games and garner support for the project. Games like LongDark, Elite Dangerous and DayZ are all set to be the first to feature on this programme for the Xbox One. Additionally, all the mods that get released on the PC for Fallout 4 will be available for download for the Xbox One version absolutely free of cost.
That’s not it, Microsoft also revealed what they feel will prove to be a winning holiday line-up with Halo 5 Guardians and The Rise of Tomb Raider topping the list. They also revealed two very promising new IPs called Recore and Sea of Thieves. Although what caught most of the older gamer’s attention was the $30 Rare games pack, which features 30 of the most classic games to be ever released like Viva Piñata and the likes. Archishman