After raising the ire of hardcore gamers with its unveiling of the Xbox One, Microsoft attempted to regain their affections with a games-driven press briefing at the E3 Expo today.
Sports and TV? No way. Kinect? Fuhgeddaboutit. Smartglass? Just a touch, please. Sure, the things that make Xbox One more than just your typical games console might prove more important to Microsoft if it wants to reach a broader audience than the 18-to-35-year-old male gamer demographic. But it knows who's watching at E3, and it wanted those viewers to come out of the event knowing that Xbox One would indeed have a lot of the games they buy millions of.
So it began with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and continued on to Dead Rising 3, and finished off with the one-two punch of a new Halo and Titanfall, the new first-person shooter from Respawn, the studio started by the exiled creators of Call of Duty. And those tentpoles were holding up dozens more games, spanning many genres.
Fans of the old, old arcade game Killer Instinct (are there any left?) can now stop asking Microsoft for a sequel; it's on the way. Fans of Sega's long-neglected dragon shooter Panzer Dragoon ... well, they still aren't getting a new one, but the original creator is developing a lookalike called Crimson Dragon.
Photo: Ariel Zambelich / Wired 
Indies Go Home
The only thing missing from Xbox One is the little guy. And that might prove to be a big miss.
Although Microsoft executives on stage paid lip service to the idea of supporting independent game creators, their actions don't seem to match their words.
Minecraft is coming to Xbox One, but can we really call this world-devouring megahit a little indie project anymore?
Microsoft seems to be fine with reaching out to a select group of smaller developers and publishing their games on its platform, but if the Xbox One press conference is any indication, that seems to only come after those developers have already had a big proven hit.
Minecraft can be ported after the fact to Xbox One, but it would have been impossible to create Minecraft from scratch on Xbox One.
What's in the Box?
For all the focus on announcing game titles with big bombastic trailers, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Xbox One was already on shelves. Microsoft did say Xbox One would launch in November for $500, but didn't talk at all about what you'd get in the box for that price. There was no discussion about how the pay-for-play Xbox Live Gold subscription service will work with Xbox One, although Microsoft did say it would add a freebie to the service for members: each month, Xbox Live Gold subscribers will get two free downloadable games. The two games announced for this giveaway so far are rather old ones – Assassin's Creed II and Halo 3.
For all the chatter about the things that Microsoft is taking away from gamers with Xbox One, perhaps giving them something for free might turn out to be a good play.
Photo: Ariel Zambelich / Wired
Same Stuff, Different Console
If there was one overriding message to Microsoft's show, and maybe one it did not intend to send, it's this: Xbox One definitely isn't going to change the types of games you play.
Everything shown looked like it could easily have been done – perhaps with an ever-so-slight loss of graphical fidelity – on the existing Xbox 360. Microsoft emphasized this when it kicked off the show with footage from a few upcoming 360 games, slick trailers that made them look indistinguishable from the Xbox One footage that would follow.
Since these games can't be sold on graphics alone, Microsoft's pitch seemed to be that Xbox One will change not the games but the way you play them. We saw a glimpse of this at the May unveiling, the ability to (e.g.) pull up your Twitter feed while a game is in progress, or "snap" instantly between two activities.
We saw a more gamer-centric iteration of this idea at E3 today. After playing a match of a fighting game, it turned out that the Xbox One had automatically captured the footage of that fight, which the player could now easily trim, upload and share.
Moreover, Microsoft announced that the popular game streaming service Twitch would be integrated into Xbox One. Press a button and you can immediately begin streaming your gameplay to your Twitch channel.
Yes, this is matching what Sony announced for PlayStation 4 in February. We'll see tonight how it will respond when Sony gets its turn.
