The spirit of E3 lives!
It's now or never for Xbox, plus PS VR2 and Sega in the 2000s.
Hello there! Please excuse the slightly shorter newsletter this week as Alice had to bow out, but we’ll be back to full length next time.
I hope you’re ready for some early mornings, because non-E3 week is practically here. The Summer Games Fest showcase kicks off on Saturday morning, with the weekend also containing Day of the Devs, Devolver, the Women-Led Games Showcase, Future Games, Wholesome Direct and Access-Ability. I’m very much looking forward to poring through all the trailers from those shows, but when it comes to old-fashioned E3-style surprise announcements and hype, we might have to wait a little longer for Microsoft on Monday, and Ubi on Tuesday.
Time for a showcase with less show, and more proof
By Tim
Heading into its big showcase on Monday, Microsoft is in quite a spot. Xbox was already hurting from a goodwill point of view in the dying years of E3, because its pipeline of major games just couldn’t seem to get into good shape, and things haven’t improved despite billions of dollars spent on acquisitions. When was the last time a Microsoft first party studio delivered a major big-budget game that was well received without any controversy or qualification? I love the newer Gears games but I know that’s not a universal opinion, so if you discount Gears 4 and 5 you probably have to go back to the Xbox 360 era to find one.
Now I’m not trying to dunk on niche interest games or big swings that didn’t quite nail it, because the truth is I personally have had a great time with Xbox Studios and Bethesda games over the past five years or so. But it’s hard to ignore that the biggest flagship titles like Halo Infinite, Redfall, Starfield and Perfect Dark have fallen flat or disappeared entirely.
Add to this the fallout from a protracted Activision Blizzard acquisition, bad press from recent studio closures, and a clear internal push from Microsoft to get its game division making more money even if it comes at the cost of Xbox as a brand, and it’s hard to see how Phil Spencer and co are going us all back on board.
A lot has been made of the potential for more Xbox games to ship on PlayStation and other platforms, or of the potential for Microsoft to introduce a gaming PC handheld. But all I really want to hear at the showcase is that Xbox is making good use of its huge bench of great studios and ridiculous collection of beloved IP to give us good stuff to play soon.
Put all of the Activision Blizzard back catalogue on Game Pass. Show a new Banjo Kazooie platformer, or a Crash or Spyro or Viva Pinata. I’d even take a Conker! Sell us on the stuff coming soon from Bethesda and reassure us about the likes of Fable and Perfect Dark.
And sure, give us a vision of what may happen in the future with Fallout, or Tony Hawk, or Guitar Hero, or Starcraft, or Halo. And a taste of the original stuff that may be coming one day. But after at least four years of Microsoft conferences that have been mostly hype about games that still haven’t come out or didn’t hit quite right, I’m really hoping for something tangible this time.
What to play
New on Game Pass this week are the stunning classic-style RPGs Octopath Traveler and Octopath Traveler 2. If you’re unfamiliar, these are turn-based affairs with eight playable characters, each with their own story to follow. You can play them in any order, which is a brilliant narrative twist, but they’ll eventually meet up and form a party. I’d recommend starting with the second one as it is significantly better. Another addition to the service is brand new cosy life sim / sushi restaurant manager Rolling Hills.
A new month means new PlayStation Plus Essential games, so make sure you claim and download them before they’re gone. For June there’s the must-play Streets of Rage 4, which is a gorgeous and satisfying brawler with an absolutely killer soundtrack. Then there’s 3D platformer Spongebob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake and arcade wrestler AEW Fight Forever.
Sony is running a Days of Play sale, with some good opportunities to grab big games from the last year or so without quite paying $100. But as ever I (Tim) think some of the more interesting discounts are on the lower end. For example all of the excellent SteamWorld games are going very cheap; you can get both Dig and Dig 2 for less than $5 total. Some other good shouts are The Last Campfire at $2, Metro Redux at $4, Civ VI at $6, Castlevania Anniversary at $6 and Mass Effect Legendary at $15. Also check out very deep discounts on the entire Shantae series and the Tomb Raider survivor trilogy.
Adapt and/or die
By Tim
Sony has finally announced its PC adapter for the PS VR2, and while I haven’t had a chance to use it yet I have some thoughts on the details we have so far. Obviously, the PS VR2 is a bit of a shambles overall, with good hardware, a huge price and practically non-existent support from Sony’s own studios, and I’m not exactly sure what this adapter does to improve things.
If you’re somebody who spent $900 on a headset to VR play games on your $850 console, you’d rightly be miffed when it turned out the games never really arrived. If you already happen to have a powerful PC, this $95 adapter and a $20 DisplayPort cable will connect your PS VR2 to all the games available in SteamVR, which is great. But that’s really the only good case scenario here.
For PS VR2 owners who don’t already have a powerful PC, this feels like telling them to spend another $1000 if they want to make use of the expensive headset they already have. I know Sony won’t outright admit that the VR library on PS5 is unacceptably slim, but it could at the very least subsidise some good games coming to PS Plus, or create a special early adopter benefit for current headset owners that gives them something on their consoles, before offering to sell them a $95 adapter they can use with a different expensive box.
And for those who don’t already own a PS VR2, the adapter and headset doesn’t seem very attractive for practically $1000. When in PC mode, the headset loses HDR, eye-tracking and haptic feedback, which still makes it a very sharp and comfy headset, but probably hard to argue for over a Meta headset that has far more games, can be used wire-free, and also easily connects to SteamVR.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
This year marks a quarter of a decade since Sega released the Dreamcast outside of Japan, triggering the beginning of the end for the company as a console-maker. But rather than go over that story again and all the reasons things went so poorly (especially in Australia where the console barely launched at all), I’m keen to look at the year and the few following it through the lens of the games Sega was publishing. While the company is best known for its 80s and 90s output, the early 2000s is a fascinating time in its library, so that’s what I’m looking at all throughout June.
1999: The Dreamcast launched in the West with four Sega-published games, but we’re only really interested in one: Sonic Adventure. A beautiful, shiny, fast and fully three-dimensional sandbox with (probably too much) in-depth storytelling and voiced characters, it was a marvel to behold. Keep in mind that the Sony and Nintendo platforms at the time were getting the likes of Spyro 2 and Donkey Kong 64 this year, making Sonic by far the most impressive-looking platformer on the market. Played today it certainly has its problems, but it also reinvented Sonic for 3D in a style that informed the character’s current representation arguably more than the classic 2D games. Plus, if you had Sega’s Tamagotchi-like VMU you could take your tiny Chao from the game and play with it on the go!
Also for Dreamcast in 1999 Sega played to its strengths in wacky peripheral games (Sega Bass Fishing, House of the Dead 2, the outrageous microphone-controlled virtual pet Seaman) and arcade ports (Dynamite Cop, Sega Rally 2, Virtua Fighter 3). But its original, traditionally controlled creations are among the best-remembered.
Hudson cloned Mario Party for the impressive Sonic Shuffle. Sonic Team put out the incredibly underrated competitive maze puzzle game ChuChu Rocket (as well as a Sonic game for SNK’s Neo Geo Pocket handheld), while Sega’s other internal teams produced the unforgettably Japanese cinematic life sim Shenmue, and the wonderful galactic rhythm-based journalism-em-up Space Channel 5.A stellar lineup that, surely, would protect Sega as Sony prepared to launch its glorified DVD player the following year.
Next time: a new millennium!