The first six months of 2024 sucked for Xbox. In January, the company sacked a tremendous number of people . In May, it closed several successful studios , drawing ire from even its most die-hard supporters.
This morning, it debuted its traditional June showcase , what would in years past have been its big E3 blowout. It was the company’s first big, unqualified success for the year. Compared to a fairly staid, smaller-scale Summer Game Fest conference , Xbox Games Showcase felt like an old-school E3 presser.
There were debut trailers for games we already knew about, like Fable , Perfect Dark , and Dragon Age: The Valeguard . We saw announcements of cool-looking new games like Doom: The Dark Ages, Age of Mythology Retold, and Fragpunk. There were fresh trailers for games due out later this year, like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Avowed , and they even got to debut the first snippet of gameplay from Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
It felt a bit like the old days when Xbox welcomed blockbusters from third-party publishers to its showcase with open arms. This was, of course, mainly due to the fact that Xbox now owns two of those publishers. The games were also fairly varied, and it seemed like quite a few were traditional single-player experiences.
That, in and of itself, is pretty exciting. At least someone is willing to throw money and marketing budget behind AAA single-player games in 2024. One could easily and reasonably complain that there weren’t enough small game.
