Microsoft now moving its focus towards the gaming industry and its presentation at E3 (the annual video game conference) showed how important it is for them to capture the attention. The company towed with a few of the things planned in the coming years.
Starting with the back-compatibility issue that has been worrying a lot of old console owners, Microsoft promised that hundreds of games designed for its Xbox 360 will work on its Xbox One console, starting with a handful of titles this year. The Xbox One can’t play Xbox 360 discs, but will instead download playable versions free once it recognizes a game that players insert.
On the games front Microsoft showed footage of Xbox One games coming this holiday season, including Halo 5: Guardians, with multiplayer support going up from 16 players in the previous installment to 24 players. Microsoft’s another in-house development Gears of War 4 was also announced, developed by The Coalition, the game will land up during Christmas of 2016. The Gears of War Ultimate Edition will be the first Gears title to land on Xbox One. It has been fully rebuilt and includes new content. The public beta starts 16 June. It’s an original game and, not a collection. It will be released on 25 August. These titles would be available exclusively on its platform next year.
The exclusive titles will help Microsoft to capture the audience attention as it attempts to catch up from being behind in the console wars. In April, the company said it had sold 10 million Xbox One units since launch in November 2013. In contrast, Sony says that by March, it had sold 22.3 million PlayStation 4s, which launched in the same month.
“If you’ve been waiting to move from your Xbox 360, now is the time,” Xbox head Phil Spencer told a crowd of hundreds at The Galen Center, an arena on the campus of the University of Southern California.
By adding backward compatibility to select games like Mass Effect — starting Monday for some 300,000 players in its preview program — Microsoft hopes gamers can ditch their old consoles for the new ones. It also is a dig at Sony’s PlayStation Plus subscription service, which offers older PS3 games for streaming but costs $50 a year.
HoloLens has been grabbing eyeballs and Microsoft wants to be the first one to have the virtual and the augmented space when the thing begins. Microsoft demonstration at E3 showed how its HoloLens could herald the next generation of gaming. It’s an augmented reality headset that allows the viewer to see holograms amid the real world. On virtual reality front, Microsoft is taking multiple approaches and said that it is partnering with Valve, the company behind games like Half Life and Counter Strike and the PC gaming platform Steam, which is also working on Vive VR headset which it is making for phonemaker HTC. Last week Microsoft announced an Xbox One controller will come with every Oculus Rift headset which the company tied up with Facebook to have upcoming Xbox One games will be playable on it.
Microsoft Studios executive Saxs Persson played Minecraft with the headset on while staring at a wall. He also played using gestures and voice commands, interacting with the world on an empty coffee table.
A special camera allowed the audience to see what he was seeing — a perfect 3-D representation of a pixelated Minecraft world. Mojang, brand director, Lydia Winters, played the game using Microsoft’s Surface tablet.
“Microsoft HoloLens gives the community a different way to play in the worlds they already love,” she said.
For hardcore gamers, Microsoft also announced the sale of a new $150 controller called Xbox Wireless Elite, with interchangeable thumbsticks, paddles, and buttons whose functions can be swapped around, starting in October.