Getting One over
Cologne stages Microsoft’s Xbox One overload at Gamescom
Suddenly, Microsoft’s E3 made more sense. Xbox head Phil Spencer had made it perfectly clear that his division would be devoting its stage time in LA to games that were coming out this year, and even named a few that were being held back for Gamescom. But while the E3 part of the plan didn’t fully come off – a solid but unremarkable showing by the standards of Sony’s rampant wish fulfilment – it is now clear that Spencer and team were playing the long game. At August’s Gamescom, Microsoft showed that it has 2016 all sewn up, too – it’s just it also has so many games out in 2015, and so much else going on, that one 90-minute show isn’t nearly enough for them all.
Given that the timings of E3 and Gamescom brought them closer together than usual, there was a certain logic behind Sony’s decision to stay away from Cologne, opting instead for a press conference at Paris Games Week in October. Yet Sony’s absence left Microsoft free, for once, to set the narrative. The story Spencer and company spun, however, is its most confident and attractive in years: Xbox One has so many games out this year and next that its developers need three hours of stage time on two continents to fit them all in. Meanwhile, the runaway market leader seemingly needs a few more months to pull together a lineup of CG trailers and other people’s Kickstarters for games not due until 2017 or beyond.
The three games Spencer had singled out for special attention ahead of the show came right at the start, and each ticked a different box on the Microsoft to-do list. Scalebound, the Platinum-made exclusive announced at E3 last year, is a vital part of the company’s effort to prove Xbox is about more than just guns, cars and sports games made by the west, for the west. It’s unfamiliar ground for Platinum, if not director Hideki Kamiya, a move from linear levels to an open world, complex combat to simple combos, and from action game to RPG. Kamiya would spend the following few days of behindclosed-doors sessions wrinkling his nose at people questioning his RPG chops as if Okami had never existed, but there are other, more pressing concerns. First, can Platinum maintain its lofty standards when working in such an