Microsoft has given an online event a look at some games that should come to the next generation of consoles. All games shown appear for the Xbox Series X, but not necessarily exclusively – many have also been announced for the current generation of consoles. With such online events, Microsoft wants to fuel anticipation for the Series X, which is expected to be available at the end of the year. This was only possible to a limited extent.
The most important announcement is “Dirt 5”: The Codemasters racing series gets a new spin-off, which plays in New York, China and Norway, among others. The developers also promise more decisions in the career mode of the racing game.
Speakers include Nolan North and Troy Baker, who are among the best-known voice actors in the industry – an indication that Codemasters is serious about the story of the racing game. “Dirt 5” will be released in October 2020 for both Xbox One and Xbox Series X, presumably Codemasters will also not leave the PC and the Playstation aside.
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Trailer for “Dirt 5” (Source: Codemasters)
Madden, Medium and Dinos
Apart from “Dirt 5”, there were no big surprises at the Xbox event. Another announcement is “Madden 21”, the new offshoot of EA’s annual football series. In addition, many games of small and medium-sized studios were presented for the first time in the livestream, where the blockbuster potential is limited.
These include the games “Chorus” and “The Medium”. “Chorus” is a space shooter that is being developed by Deep Silver and is expected to be launched in 2021. “The Medium” is the new game from Bloober Team, a studio specializing in horror games, whose portfolio includes successful titles such as “Layers of Fear” and “Observer”. Family is a central theme in “The Medium”. The music comes from Akira Yamaoka, who composed the music for the “Silent Hill” games. “The Medium” is one of the more promising titles that Microsoft has shown in the stream.
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Trailer for “The Medium” (Source: Bloober Team)
Also announced were the action games “Bright Memory Infinite” and “Scarlet Nexus”, a kind of “Devil May Cry” with walking flower pots instead of demons. “Second Extinction” is a co-op shooter that hits dinosaurs. “Call of The Sea” will be a colorful adventure game, “The Ascent” a top-down action game in a cyberpunk setting.
“Gameplay” is relative
Microsoft had promised the gameplay scenes in advance of the stream, but many games only showed so-called in-engine scenes. With such trailers, the graphics are generated from the game engine, but they do not necessarily represent the reality of the finished game. For example, with “Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla”: Developer Ubisoft had also announced gamely material you could see especially polished surroundings and figures from cutscenes – scenes from the actual player perspective were missing. The community promptly acknowledged this on YouTube with mostly negative reviews and comments.
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Trailer for “Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla” (Source: Ubisoft)
Also for “Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2” the developers mainly showed specially produced material. Nevertheless, the atmospheric trailer was one of the highlights of the Microsoft presentation. The successor to the iconic PC role-playing game has been in development at Paradox Interactive for a long time. However, nothing came of the release, which was originally planned for spring 2020, and the developers are now using the time gained to port their RPG to Xbox Series X and Playstation 5. However, there is still no fixed release date.
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Trailer for “Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2” (Source: Paradox Interactive)
The fact that the firecrackers failed to come up with the Xbox presentation is also due to Microsoft’s reluctance: you don’t want to show your own games until the summer, the Xbox manufacturer had already announced in advance of the live stream. Microsoft now plans to host similar live streams with game announcements every month.
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