I haven’t really live blogged anything in a while, and E3 is a great excuse. Microsoft’s press conference is about to start.

Let’s do this!

11:43am – Halo 5 was less than impressive. Looked like Call of Duty with aliens.

11:45 – No idea what this is, but the cinematics look interesting. Girl, robot dog, weird, but interesting

11:45 – Recore. Must be a new IP.

11:46 – Yup, new franchise.

11:47 – “greatest games lineup in xbox history”, lol. We’ll see.

11:47 – “xbox one backwards compatible”. Ok, that’s huge. Good move on their part. Too bad I already sold my whole 360 collection. 🙁

11:48 – “100 titles this holiday”, ah, wait. So, it’s not a hardware thing. They’re just authorizing you to be able play what you already own. Still, good idea, but it’s not the “disk” that’s spinning in the drive. That’s just the key to get the download. Downloads and emulation.

11:50 – “we won’t charge you to play games you already own”. Duh. I own them (or, I did). Can’t double dip MS, although I know you wanted to.

11:51 – Trailer for a new controller? Really? Swappable parts? lol. I guess they got tired of everyone buying Razer, Cinch and Evil stuff, lol.

11:52 – Todd from Bethesda. More Fallout 4 stuff. Not an xbox exclusive, but good to see more gameplay.

11:53 – Giving more detail about the engine. Most people won’t care about Volumetric lighting. Yeah, they mention VATS. Rumor was that it was gone. Glad it’s still there. Wouldn’t be Fallout without it.

11:55 – Ooh, laser musket. Neat

11:56 – And a mech suit. Ok, now I’m excited for FO4.

11:58 – Fallout MODS made on the PC now compatible with the XB1. Holy crap. That’s pretty huge as well. I’m hoping it’s a game feature, and not a XB1 exclusive feature.

11:59 – EA Access. EA, just die. Membership to a service WITHIN a membership for a service WITHIN a game console. Nope.

12:00 – No one cares about EA Access. “We’re giving you access to ALL 12 titles!” Ahahahahah. Seriously?

12:01 – Garden Warfare 2. Still don’t care. You pretty much ruined that franchise EA. No one wanted Gw1, no one wants GW2.

12:03 – Garden Warfare trailer . Make it stop. Oh please, make it stop.

12:04 – Ford commercial. Probably going to talk Forza

12:05 – Yup, Forza 6. Interesting call showcasing the actual Ford GT car and not leading in with the game. Pretty car. Looks like a Ferrari.

12:06 – “Biggest, most advance, most beautiful game we’ve ever made”. Aren’t they all? I mean, technically, games don’t get “uglier”, and larger memory and storage in consoles give them more to work with. It would be weird for a game franchise to get smaller and uglier.

12:07 – Racing games just aren’t my thing. I’m sure my brother is stoked.

12:08 – “World Premiere” of something – translation, not exclusive, but we paid the most to show it off first.

12:10 – Still no idea what this is. Crazy opera music building.

12:10 – Dark Souls III – I instantly don’t care. I’m not a masochist.

12:10 – The Division footage – now we’re talking. This is more in my wheelhouse.

12:11 – Please have a release date, please have a release date…

12:12 – French guy from Ubisoft. “Deevizion” lol. No one laughs at his jokes. Yikes.

12:13 – XB1 gets Division beta first in Dec. No talk of release date. Probably still Feb.

12:13 – Rainbow Six Vegas 1&2 free with Siege. Nice bonus.

12:14 – R6: Siege footage we’ve already seen. Excited for this one. Was a huge R6 fan.

12:15 – R6: Siege 10-13-15. Excellent.

12:16 – TF2 ripoff, *cough*, I mean Gigantic

12:17 – Whole bunch of indie games showcased. Not terribly interested in most of these. I absolutely applaud indie games in general, but nothing they showed really got me interested.

12:20 – Talking more about the indie platform, indie developers mentioned. Tacoma look mildly interesting. Ashen, not so much.

12:21 – Ashen – nothing quite like, literally, faceless protagonists.

12:22 – Sky whale?

12:22 – Beyond Eyes, story about a blind girl visualizing the world. Good on them for trying something new. Just not my cup of tea.

12:23 – Cup head – Read about this. Not huge on retro shooters, but it’s an interesting visual style. Nice soundtrack though.

12:25 – Thanking indie devs.

12:26 – Xbox Game Preview = Steam Early access. “This type of program is already popular on PC”. They just mentioned it. DayZ – yuck. How is that still in beta. It’s entire existence is beta.

12:28 – Dean Hall – creator of DayZ. Sigh. Not a fan of this guy, or his game.

12:29 – Working on new game. Something space related.

12:30 – Game called Ion. Zero gameplay shown. All CG. No release date. No one claps. lol

12:30 – Tomb Raider gameplay. Xbox exclusive this time. Wonder how much they paid for that. Tomb Raider was a huge franchise. Weird that they went the exclusive route. Footage looks good though. Hope XB1 owners enjoy it. The previous one was pretty solid.

12:32 – Lara Croft, most epic upper-body strength ever.

12:33 – This has a faint Uncharted feel to it.

12:34 – Nothing faint about it. Very Uncharted feeling. Not a bad idea. Uncharted is the king of the “lets play a movie” concept.

12:36 – Excellent trailer from Tomb Raider

12:37 – Rare Collection. Meh. Never player Conker or Banjo Kazooie. Nah, I’ll pass.

12:38 – “Rare fans” is that still a thing? “New Exclusive game”. “Shared Adventure Game”. “Limitless possibilities”.

12:39 – Looks like something I would have expected to see at the Nintendo presser tomorrow (in style). Pretty much AC:Blackflag, only kinda cartoony. Sea of Thieves. Hmm. You meant to say “Pirates” but that was taken, wasn’t it? “Sea Thieves”, lololol.

12:41 – “A world full of…” stuff. Fable legends. Bleg! That franchise jumped the shark 3 games ago.

12:43 – “Windows 10 is neat”, blah, blah. Announcing new relationship wit Valve VR. Oh pooh. Oculus bundled with XB1 controller, for Win10. Not sure any of this will actually take off. Going to take a huge buy-in from the public.

12:45 – New stuff from Mojang. Minecraft with Holo-lens. I know it’s popular, but aren’t we kind of exploiting it at this point?

12:48 – Every 12 year old just messed their pants. This is pretty much a kids’ dream setup. Probably available for a bazillion dollars with their parents credit cards. No talk of price. I can’t imagine this is going to be cheap.

12:51 – Gears of War – “Gears of War Ultimate Edition” – rehashed for XB1. Nothing like creating new products from old ones.

12:53 – “A new Gears of War?! I’m so surprised!” said no one ever.

12:55 – So dark, I can’t see anything. lol

12:56 – Monsters in the dark, who would have thought.

12:58 – Hitting stuff in the face with chainsaws is always fun though.

12:59 – Phil Spencer again. Nearly over. Just wrapping it up. With the exception of Tomb Raider, I’m ok with missing out on their “exclusives”. The back catalog is a nice point, a slap right in Sony’s face. The mods in Fallout will be interesting too. Other than that, nothing earth shattering from the Microsoft camp. They did a nice job, but pretty much just the status quo. As it still stands, the real big stuff is all third party this year. We’ll see what Sony has in store tonight.