By Tom Richardson, BBC Newsbeat
![Microsoft A scene from Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 shows two police officers training their guns on a man riding a motorbike, who's in mid-air jumping over a parked police car. Behind him a grand-looking building with two large US flags hanging from the large marble arches is visible.](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/340a/live/7d1a9020-2704-11ef-a13a-0b8c563da930.png.webp)
Gaming’s annual preview marathon passed off over the weekend, with dozens of recent titles on present.
In opposition to the backdrop of an business wrestling with layoffs and questions over its future, expectations of seeing many new blockbuster titles had been low this 12 months.
Microsoft capped off the principle occasions with a profitable showcase, and followers of Name of Responsibility received an prolonged take a look at upcoming, Nineteen Nineties-set Black Ops 6.
It will be the primary recreation within the collection to seem on the Xbox Recreation Move service, and its builders can be hoping to banish the reminiscence of final 12 months’s poorly acquired Trendy Warfare III marketing campaign.
However that was simply the icing on a really busy cake.
BBC Newsbeat spent our weekend watching hours and hours of announcement livestreams so you did not have to.
Listed here are among the highlights.
‘Xbox eatin’ good’
![Microsoft CGI shot from Gears of War: E-Day shows a man in heavy, space-marine armour listening intently to another character, whose shoulder the viewer is looking over. It's a dark scene, lit only by a torch built in to the shoulder of the main subject's armour.](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/e585/live/6431c330-2704-11ef-80aa-699d54c46324.jpg.webp)
Although the traces of console exclusivity have gotten increasingly blurry, showcase season wouldn’t be full and not using a post-match debate about who ‘received’.
And most agreed that Microsoft placed on a robust show.
It wanted one. Thus far Xbox’s 2024 has been dominated by headlines about mass layoffs and criticism over the closure of four in-house studios.
Microsoft’s showcase didn’t dwell on any of that, but it surely did take the possibility to remind us all that it now owns an enormous chunk of the AAA video games business because of its $65bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Free to flex its merger muscle groups this 12 months after lastly sealing the deal, it kicked off with a montage from upcoming Name of Responsibility: Black Ops 6, which received its personal devoted preview straight after the principle occasion.
From there it launched into an action-packed trailer for Doom: The Darkish Ages, and the remainder of the one-hour session crammed in a number of flagship franchises together with Warcraft, Diablo, Elder Scrolls On-line and the recently revitalised Fallout 76.
At occasions it felt like a best hits reel, and Microsoft appeared to drive that time residence when it closed the principle preview with footage of a brand new Gears of Battle recreation. The soundtrack of Gary Jules’s Mad World was the identical track used within the influential trailer for the unique 2006 recreation within the collection. A full-circle second.
Followers additionally received glimpses of Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle, Fable, the Excellent Darkish reboot and Ukraine-developed STALKER 2.
Critics would say the showcase may’ve been extra diversified – while you boil it down it was heavy on open-world motion, RPGs and first-person shooters. However followers would level out these are the genres Xbox constructed its model upon.
And there was additionally reward for the variety on present – most of the titles seen featured feminine protagonists or individuals belonging to ethnic minorities as their most important characters.
Microsoft’s gaming division has been accused of missing course lately, and questions will stay about the place it desires to take the Xbox model in future and whether or not all of its studios will survive.
However for one evening, no less than, it efficiently steered the dialog again to its video games.
SGF underpromised… and delivered
![Riot Comic book-style image of a female character against a bright pink background wearing a skin-tight armour suit. It's purple, like her short, bob hairstyle and matching face mask. She's looking back over her shoulder and holding a futuristic blaster weapon with a green glow in one hand.](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/b3ba/live/13b6dbe0-2707-11ef-8b66-b50a998e8ebf.png.webp)
Host Geoff Keighley warned followers forward of this 12 months’s occasion that the headline Summer season Recreation Fest showcase can be a “gentle” affair with no large surprises.
And he was just about true to his phrase.
Apart from a visitor look from Treatment Leisure’s Sam Lake asserting that new content material for 2023 recreation of the 12 months contender Alan Wake 2 can be launched the following day, the occasion didn’t include many drop-your-coffee moments.
And other than Civilization VII – an replace within the long-running technique collection – and a brand new Sonic recreation, there weren’t too many appearances from well-known franchises.
However we did discover out that standard on-line shooter Valorant is coming to consoles, received a quick glimpse of the upcoming Harry Potter Quidditch Championship, and a star-studded trailer for Killer Bean. We additionally noticed the primary set of video games from horror film studio Blumhouse, together with a brand new title from Bafta-winning recreation director Sam Barlow.
Sony and Lego additionally revealed that their collaboration based mostly on PlayStation’s Horizon collection can even be coming to PC and Nintendo Change, however not Xbox.
2024 might be the 12 months of the indie recreation
![Neoludic Games A painterly style screenshot from Tiny Bookshop, showing a small wooden caravan erected in the car park of a supermarket. Customers mill about in front of the stall and a cat sits on an armchair in front of it. On the screen there are various icons denoting different books and the number of each the player has sold.](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/578b/live/95496670-2705-11ef-a13a-0b8c563da930.jpg.webp)
Thus far this 12 months most of gaming’s actual breakout success tales reminiscent of Palworld, Helldivers II and Animal Nicely have come from smaller studios.
And, for these individuals who did really feel the in any other case well-received Xbox showcase was a bit samey, there was a variety of indie trailerfests to maintain followers busy.
In addition to two devoted streams after the principle occasion, there have been additionally periods devoted to women-led video games, titles from Latin American builders and Healthful Direct – an hour celebrating “uplifting, compassionate, cozy video games”.
Amongst Us developer Innersloth unveiled its new funding mission, Outersloth, aimed toward serving to different indie builders to get their video games out.
With headlines specializing in troubles on the triple-A finish of the video games business, the battle for indies to search out funding can get neglected. And Innersloth – a pandemic success story – received reward for paying again a few of its personal breakout success.
Thirsty Suitors studio Outerloop Video games (no relation), is without doubt one of the first builders to get funding from Outersloth.
Co-founder Chandana Ekanayake informed BBC Asian Community the mission is “nice” for indie studios “which might be self-sufficient and searching to have the ability to succeed within the video games enterprise”, by giving them a substitute for conventional publishing offers.
Don’t imagine (all of the) hype
Rumours and wishful considering are the gasoline of the pre-showcase hype machine, and this 12 months hypothesis was rife.
There have been some fairly spot-on predictions, however not all of them got here true.
Most notably, a rumoured Microsoft handheld didn’t make an look, however in a follow-up interview with gaming website IGN, Xbox boss Phil Spencer steered there can be extra {hardware} bulletins.
Claims that we might see new releases within the Resident Evil franchise did not come to move, and there was no signal of Borderlands 4, even when we did see a brief clip from the upcoming film adaptation.
And should you braved the reside feedback sections in the course of the SGF and Xbox showcases you might need questioned why individuals saved shouting “SKONG”.
It is a reference to Hole Knight: Silksong, the sequel to 2017’s mega-popular Metroidvania journey developed by the tiny crew at Australian developer Crew Cherry.
There’s nonetheless yet another showcase from publishing big Ubisoft nonetheless to return, and all the weekend’s reveals could be watched once more here.
Extra reporting by Bertin Huynh.
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