Category: Gamespot

Kicking off the second day of E3 2018 is Microsoft. The company had a phenomenal lineup of big announcements. It announced some of the latest entries in its most iconic franchises, like Halo Infinite and Gears 5. In addition, big-name sequels and new IPs were debuted, which included Cyberpunk 2077, Devil May Cry 5, and Dying Light.

But don’t let this opening tell you everything there is to know about the press conference. We’ve rounded up all of the announcements from the briefing, and below you’ll find all of our coverage of Microsoft’s event. In the meantime, you can check out our Microsoft press conference liveblog if you want to re-experience the show.

The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit

Life Is Strange Spin-Off Gets Adorable E3 2018 Trailer–The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit will be free later this June.

Battletoads

New Battletoads Confirmed For Xbox At E3 2018–The beat-em-up franchise returns next year with a brand-new instalment.

Cuphead

Cuphead Gets New Playable Character And Bosses–Cuphead is getting a new playable character, and new enemies and bosses

Crackdown 3

Terry Crews Yells A Lot In New Crackdown 3 Trailer–Check out a new trailer for the recently delayed Xbox One and PC game.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 Trailer Shows A Stunning Futuristic City–CD Projekt Red has lifted the veil on Cyberpunk 2077 at Microsoft’s E3 press conference. Here’s everything we’ve learned about the upcoming Xbox One, PS4, and PC game.

Devil May Cry V

Devil May Cry 5 Revealed At Xbox Press Conference–Devil May Cry 3 director Hideaki Itsuno returns to the series for its newest entry.

The Division 2

The Division 2 Debuts At Xbox Conference, Washington DC Setting Confirmed–We got our first glimpse at The Division 2 at Microsoft’s showcase, confirming the setting and a load of new features.

The Division 2 Revealed, Release Date Announced–Ubisoft’s new shooter arrives in early 2019.

Dying Light 2

Dying Light 2 Announced At Microsoft E3 2018 Conference–At its E3 2018 presentation, Microsoft showed an announcement trailer for Dying Light 2, followed by an extended demo explaining the cause-and-effect system.

Fallout 76

Fallout 76 Trailer Debuts At Xbox Press Conference–Take a look at the world from Fallout 76, which doesn’t look as destroyed as the Fallout worlds we’re used to seeing.

Fallout 76 Will Be Four Times The Size Of Fallout 4–At Microsoft’s E3 press conference, Fallout 76’s creators revealed the Xbox One, PS4, and PC game will be much, much larger than Fallout 4.

Fallout 4 Available On Xbox Game Pass Today–Todd Howard took the stage during the Microsoft conference to show off Fallout 76, but he dropped a little treat you can access today as well.

Forza Horizon 4

Forza Horizon 4 Announced, Coming This Year–During the Microsoft press conference, the next Forza Horizon game was revealed. It’s set in Great Britain and set to launch in October.

Forza Horizon 4 Release Date Revealed At E3 2018–Here’s when you can get your hands on the next racing game from Microsoft.

Gears of War

Kait Goes On a Journey of Discovery In Gears Of War 5’s First Gameplay Trailer–Kait Diaz struggles with strange visions in Gears of War 5’s first gameplay trailer

New Gears Of War Mobile Game Announced, But It’s Not What You Expect–Gears Pop, a “Gears experience with an official Funko Pop twist,” is coming to iOS and Android in 2019.

Gears Tactics Announced At Microsoft E3 2018 Showcase–The Coalition showed up at Microsoft’s E3 2018 presentation to announce a trio of Gears games, among them a new tactical game appropriately called Gears Tactics.

Halo Infinite

Halo Infinite Announced For Xbox One–The time was right for the Master Chief’s return, and Microsoft made time on its stage to tease the return of the iconic character.

Jump Force

Naurto, Dragon Ball, One Piece, And Death Note Crossover In Jump Force–A new anime arena fighting game was announced during Microsoft’s E3 press conference. Jump Force brings together four franchises in a 3D brawler.

Just Cause 4

Just Cause 4 Trailer Is As Crazy As You’d Expect–Rico returns, and he’s crazier than ever.

Kingdom Hearts 3

New Kingdom Hearts 3 Trailer Debuts at Xbox E3 2018 Briefing–Check out the new trailer for Kingdom Hearts 3 featuring characters from Frozen and Wreck-It-Ralph.

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus Trailer Shows A Vicious Wasteland–4A Games’ open-world survival shooter looks like it’s going to be challenging and ruthless.

Metro Exodus Release Date Announced–The first-person shooter launches for PS4, Xbox One, and PC in February on the same day as BioWare’s Anthem.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Ori And The Will Of The Wisps Gets New Gameplay Trailer For Xbox One–The follow up to the indie hit Ori And The Blind Forest had a new gameplay trailer during Microsoft’s E3 press conference.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

PUBG on Xbox One Getting New Sanhok Map This Summer–Xbox One players will be getting PUBG’s new map soon, Microsoft announced at its E3 2018 press conference.

Sea of Thieves Update

Sea Of Thieves E3 2018 Trailer Teases Ancient Evil–Microsoft is devoted to its zany pirate adventure game, as a new trailer for Sea of Thieves premiered during the company’s E3 presentation.

Sekio: Shadows Die Twice (FromSoftware’s New Game)

Dark Souls Dev’s New Game Revealed During Xbox E3 2018 Briefing–From Software’s next game has been officially announced; and it’s published by Activision.

Xbox One Game Pass

Xbox Game Pass Adds High-Profile Titles Today; The Division, Fallout 4–Microsoft is pumping new games into Xbox One Game Pass today with Fallout 4, The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, and The Division.

Xbox “Fast Start” Feature Makes Game Pass Titles Load Faster–This new feature can make Game Pass titles load twice as fast.

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Ubisoft continues to deliver on the E3 2018 surprises. As one of the major third publishers, the company had no shortage of announcements concerning its latest games. Aside from exciting new details about Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and The Division 2, the company also showcased new trailers for Skull & Bones and Beyond Good & Evil 2.

To help you keep up to date with everything going on, we’ve rounded up all of the announcements from the briefing. But if you’d like to live through the excitement of the event again with us, be sure to jump into our Ubisoft press conference liveblog.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Will Let You Play As A Male Or Female Assassin–Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will allow players to decide between a playable male or female assassin to play through the game with.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s Ancient Greece Setting Confirmed–It’s official: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will transport players to ancient Greece.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s New Trailer Leaps Straight Into The Action–Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will launch on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Release Date Revealed–Ubisoft’s latest Assassin’s Creed game, set in Ancient Greece, now has a release date; here’s when it will hit PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey Will Let You Play Early If You Pay Extra–Ubisoft announces the Deluxe, Gold, and Ultimate editions of the PS4, Xbox One, and PC game.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s Modern Day Story Picks Up From Origins–Odyssey will pick up right where Origins left off with its modern day story featuring Layla.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Has Branching Dialogue Choices–Ubisoft is making big changes to the Assassin’s Creed franchise, such as the inclusion of choice-based dialogue throughout the whole game.

Beyond Good & Evil 2

Beyond Good & Evil 2 Trailer Reveals Jade And Other Returning Characters–A few familiar faces appear in the game’s latest cinematic trailer.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 Getting Content From Joseph Gordon Levitt’s Company–Ubisoft partners with the Inception actor for a campaign where anyone can create content for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC game.

The Crew 2

Open Beta For Ubisoft’s Racing Game The Crew 2 Coming Soon–The beta will arrive soon, and you can pre-load it right now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The Division 2

The Division 2 Will Have Raids And New Specializations, Ubisoft Confirms At E3 2018–The first Division was criticised for a lack of end-game content, but the new PS4, Xbox One, and PC game will offer more.

The Division 2 DLC To Be Completely Free, Ubisoft Announces–Ubisoft announces at E3 2018 that The Division 2 will get three free DLC episodes in its first year.

For Honor Update

For Honor’s Ambitious Breach Mode Announced–For Honor’s developers think Breach mode could become the new flagship mode.

For Honor Adding A New Faction For First Time Ever–The Wu Lin, a Chinese fighting force, will be For Honor’s first new faction since launch, Ubisoft reveals during its E3 press conference.

Get For Honor Free For A Limited Time–For Honor’s Starter Edition is free on Uplay, but the deal won’t last forever.

Just Dance 2019

Just Dance 2019 Confirmed At E3 2018–The next entry in Ubisoft’s ultra-popular dancing franchise has been announced.

Skull & Bones

Skull & Bones’ New Trailer Depicts The Golden Age Of Piracy–Sailors seize their fortune and rise to power in Skull & Bones’ E3 2018 trailer.

Skull & Bones Hunting Grounds Mode Revealed, Features PvPvE–Ubisoft provides a better look at its upcoming shared pirate game for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Starlink: Battle for Atlas

Star Fox Joins Ubisoft’s Cool-Looking New Sci-Fi Toy Game–Ubsoft and Nintendo team up again, this time for the upcoming PS4, Xbox One, and Switch game; watch a trailer and get all the details here.

Starlink: Battle For Atlas Release Date Revealed–Ubisoft’s E3 2018 press conference gave us plenty of news, including Starlink: Battle for Atlas’s release date.

Transference

Ubisoft’s Creepy Game Transference From Elijah Wood Gets A Spooky Trailer–Transference is a creepy Ubisoft title coming to Oculus, Vive, PlayStation VR, PS4, and Xbox One this fall.

Trials Rising

Ubisoft Press Conference Reveals New Game Trials Rising–A new Trials game is in development at Ubisoft, and it’ll have a beta ahead of release.

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Prior to E3, things weren’t looking great for Microsoft. Crackdown was delayed to 2019. Sea of Thieves launch got off to an unstable start. And the console’s list of exclusives looked lacking, to say the least. But the Microsoft press conference cracked open the shell obscuring what the Xbox has planned for the near future. And things are now looking much better. Matt Booty, the recently appointed head of first party studios, explained in an interview at E3 that he’s trying to do more than just put out sequels to existing franchises; he he hopes to do more “branching out sideways.”

“For example, you saw what we’re doing with Gears of War,” Booty explained. “We’re putting the game on three different platforms with three different games in three different genres. We’ve got a core Gears game on console. We’ve got a new exploration off in mobile. We’ve got a whole new kind of game off in PC with Gears Tactics, right? And that’s one way we’ll grow.”

But the other avenue for growth is equally headline-making: Xbox announced partnerships with five new studios, all of which will fall under Booty’s umbrella. “We’re going to bet on people, we’re going to bet on ideas. We’re going to go on, Phil [Spencer] used the word, a ‘quest’ to find creators. You think about the common thread with people like Guillaume [Provost] at Compulsion Games, Nina at Ninja Theory. These are studio leaders who really understand the craft of the game and the creativity.”

Booty says that he also has some “complete blank slates.” For the hiring of Darrell Gallagher, who heads up the newly formed Santa Monica studio, Booty gave him a “blank piece of paper,” and told him, “You go hire the team you want. You go work on the game you want. We’re going to get you a building you want, and we want to just start a studio from scratch.”

The future of Xbox games sounds promising, but 2018 still feels light on exclusives. In response to that, Booty boasts that the power of the Xbox One makes the console’s strong third party line-up an equally important selling point. “We saw partners of our stage, folks like Bethesda, who have decided to show their content many times first on our stage, and flat out have said, ‘Hey, we think this looks best on Xbox One X.’ So we’ve got some cool stuff coming from first party as we get into holiday, but we’ve got a whole bunch of partners that are bringing content over the next year that really plays best on Xbox.”

But the Microsoft gaming division is about more than just games. Spencer teased that a console streaming service is on the way. There’s the dedicated streaming app Mixer. And on the hardware side, there’s already a team at work on the next iteration of Xbox hardware. How does someone like Booty help elevate his teams while also making sure everything else Microsoft has coming up gets the attention it needs?

“The job of first party, really at the core, is to be kind of a beacon and a lighthouse for a lot of our things,” he explains. “So when we first said, ‘What if we put games into Game Pass at the same time that we put them into retail and digital?’ There were some questions about that. Does that mean that people are only going to play it in the Game Pass? Is that going to impact retail sales?

“Sea of Thieves was our first game to go day and date into Game Pass, followed by State of Decay, and what we have found is that we’ve had great success with both of those games at retail and digital, and we’ve got a bunch of people inside Game Pass engaging with the game either because they were already subscribed to Game Pass, or they might not have engaged with that game before, but because it’s available to them inside Game Pass, they try it out. It’s about exploration, and about discovery. We’ve had over two million people play State of Decay so far just in its short time since launch, and that really is, I believe, because Game Pass has opened up a bigger audience. There is some inherent risk in there, but the job of Microsoft Studios is to go first, and to really be that lighthouse.

“When you think all the way back to the very first Xbox: Halo as a shooter–it’s almost hard to believe now, but at the time, there was all this debate about whether shooters would work on console. ‘How can you possibly play a shooter on a console? Are you going to be able to have the internet? Multiplayer, how does that work?’ And yet Halo took the risk and was there first, really made it work, and it was obviously a great success.

“So when you think about balancing those priorities, the thing we’ve got to remember and that we’ve got to orient to is that’s our job. Our job is to sort of be there first, and I sit in the same meetings in the same rooms with folks who are the leaders for Game Pass, for Mixer, with our hardware engineers, and we all collaborate very closely. One of the advantages of being part of first party is that we have access with them and we have the ability to influence those decisions.”

The balancing act is not an easy, and the coming year will show how well Booty is going to be able to execute on his plans for coordination and expansion. But whether or not it’s ultimately successful, Microsoft is going to have some exciting announcements in the next few years.

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Actor Steve Downes has voiced Master Chief in every mainline Halo instalment to date, and it appears that’s going to continue with Halo Infinite. During E3, Downes strongly suggested on Twitter that he is coming back to voice the super-soldier in 343’s upcoming game.

The Xbox Twitter account asked Halo fans, “Are you ready to get back to work?” Downes replied, “I was born ready.” While not confirmed, it really sounds like Downes will be back to play Chief again.

In 2015, just before Halo 5: Guardians launched, Downes sent out a tweet that sounded like he might be retiring from the Halo franchise. This was the same year that he retired as a radio host, so some believed Downes might be taking a step back from professional work, including Halo.

Thankfully, it sounds like he’s coming back to Halo at least once more. We have followed up with Microsoft in an attempt to get more details on Downes’ involvement in Halo Infinite.

What we do know about Halo Infinite is that it will tell a more Master Chief-centric story, which is good news after Halo 5 steered away from him. According to Xbox marketing boss Aaron Greenberg, Infinite is a “bigger and bolder” Halo game that will go back to the roots of the Halo franchise.

No release date has been set for Infinite, but it sounds like it won’t launch anytime soon. The game has a new art style and goes in “new and unexpected directions,” while 343 has also teased that you’ll get to play early in beta tests. For lots more on Infinite, check out GameSpot’s breakdown of everything you need to know from E3.

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Sega’s beloved Dreamcast classic Shenmue is coming to modern platforms. During the Sega Fes event in Japan, the publisher announced it is bringing both the first Shenmue and its sequel, Shenmue II, together in one package to PS4, Xbox One, and PC later this year. And while they will boast some improvements, these are not full on HD remakes or remasters.

The Shenmue I & II collection is billed as the “best Shenmue experience to date.” The compilation comes with a host of modern features, including “fully scalable screen resolution, choice of modern or classic control schemes, PC graphics options, an updated user interface, and the option to enjoy either the original Japanese or English voiceovers.”

Sega hasn’t announced pricing details or an exact release date for Shenmue I & II, but the collection will be available at retail and digitally from the PlayStation and Xbox Stores, as well as Steam. You can take a look at some screenshots from the title in the gallery below.

The first Shenmue originally launched in 1999 and, at the time of its release, had the distinction of being the most expensive video game ever created. Its sequel followed in 2001, although it was only released on Dreamcast in Europe and Japan; the game was later ported to the original Xbox in 2002.

Both titles star Ryo Hazuki, a young martial artist on a quest to find his father’s killer and uncover the secret behind a mysterious item known as the Dragon Mirror. The titles were renowned for their impressive open world, deep battle system, and variety of minigames. You can read more about each in our original Shenmue review and Shenmue II review.

Sega had previously said it was “investigating” a potential re-release of the Shenmue games, although at the time the publisher said it wasn’t simply a matter of porting the titles to modern consoles. “With games as immersive as [Shenmue and Shenmue II], there are further complications [involving] licensed products that were included in the original games,” Sega Europe community manager Dan Sheridan said.

A new installment in the series, Shenmue III, is currently in development for PS4 and PC, following a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. That game is being published worldwide by Deep Silver and is planned to launch sometime this year. You can see some recent screenshots of Shenmue III.

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