With Nintendo doing their own thing for some time and Sony now borrowing from that idea pile it seems like this year’s E3 is Microsoft’s opportunity to stake a strong claim for their idea of the future of gaming. Even Google jumped in early to reveal more on Stadia so it seems like the time is theirs to capitalise on if they can.

It’s only a couple of days to go now until we find out and I’m going to take advantage of a Monday public holiday here to get up for the 6am AEST start time. What’s going to be covered I don’t know but I’ll throw in a few wild guesses:

• Xbox “Scarlett” might get a reveal like the Xbox One X did with the Project Scorpio announcement that revealed their intent with the product but not all the details.
• I wonder if the “xCloud” streaming service will be tied into Game Pass or the Gold Subscription? It’d fit for sure and present a lot of added value in the process.
• It’s been long discussed that a new Fable is coming from Playground Games but I wonder if that’ll be true. There’s now dedicated RPG studios at Microsoft with inXile and Obsidian and I still think Compulsion Games could do Fable based on We Happy Few. In other words there’s options!
• Their back catalogue is going to be leveraged with older IPs getting another chance. Microsoft may not have as large a stable of major (or successful) franchises as other platforms do but there’s plenty that fans would love to see again. Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, Project Gotham Racing, Perfect Dark… Mech Assault!
• Halo Infinite takes the franchise into Destiny or The Division territory. With a name like that it seems natural to think the team at 343 Industries is looking towards making a game that can be played and expanded on for a long, long time.

We’ll find out soon enough! And as usual will post what I think too. 🙂