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Xbox Indie Live Showcase - 26.03.2021 9:00 PDT / 16:00 GMT

Bartski

Gold Member
Song of Iron looks really cool. I'm down for some Viking Dropkicks.
Right? Definitely getting my hands on this. It's a one-man production tho ... we'll see.

also, Exo One is a game I'd probably never "normally" buy but since that drops on gamepass I'll sure check it out as well. Does it have a release date?
 

reksveks

Member
Astria Ascending looks good, games got a bit more interesting for me now.

A 3d turn based strategy game? Lost Eidolons

 
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MS should've probably advertised this as their E3 for Indies and people would've expected a longer, more relaxed show from the onset. Because that's basically what it feels like for me so far.

Quite enjoying it though, drawn-out interviews aside. Interviews probably could've been truncated during the main show and put some extended segments at the end but that's probably hard to do with a live event. Lots of games shown so far I'm interested in from Exo-Mecha to Ascent to the postal delivery and rally games among others.

Always good to give some shine to the indie devs in the scene; the scene has become a lot more varied and scope of games more complex versus where the scene started in the early 7th-gen days (or arguably earlier if looking at the PC scene, I still remember games like Iji and The White Chamber being standouts for indies way back...they're both pretty good games too btw).
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
I think xbox took the whole "Xbox has no games" thing, extremely personally. This is an exhausting amount of games. Most is bin fodder, but there are some gems in there too.
 
This is terrible. Briana is always smiling and so fake it hurts and Trisha is the Milf i guess...
MS needs someone new to get this kind of shows done.
Yeah I really hate when someone puts on a fake act. I watched it for about 30 mins before having to turn it off. It's just dragged out too much and the 3 min breaks were absurd. Not the way to do an indie event Microsoft.
 

j0hnnix

Gold Member
"Oooooweeee..."

These hosts..
iron man eye roll GIF
 

Bartski

Gold Member
Finally something! Twelve minutes, I dig this one a lot, on my radar since announced. Love the general idea and presentation, the fact it's point-and-click sort of mechanics as just revealed is good news to me. I'm in.
 

Interfectum

Member
Looks like MS has Indies locked up and on Game Pass too. It's going to come to a point where Sony simply can't answer all of the punches MS is throwing at them. It's going to be pure bedlam here when MS AAA exclusives start rolling out next year.
 
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Kuranghi

Member
So many games here I'm interested in, very cool!

Go Ahead Reaction GIF


People should calm down about the format, its an impossible task to not make it cringey and I think the devs are being honest and talking with passion about their games. Just chill out a bit guys why is everyone so furious in this thread:

angry leonardo dicaprio GIF


I have nothing better to do with my time just now than watch a 300 hour showcase, fair enough if you are a bit more time limited.
 
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Yeah this format is...not very good. And unfortunately it's at the detriment of a lot of really cool-looking games. It's just too drawn-out; a lot of these games we see more of the devs and streamers talking (with very little/no gameplay during those segments) than the games themselves.

I'm starting to think Microsoft/Xbox mainly sponsored this stream but setting up this format was on Twitch's end, considering it's on their website. So I can't say I'm surprised with the focus on the interviews and such because that's just how Twitch usually is, but it could've been a lot tighter/better paced.

A bit of a shame because there's a lot of good games that've been shown, but they're getting buried under all of these drawn-out interviews that could've been done after a 1-hour/1 1/2 hour showcase with just the games and maybe a quick word from the devs stating they'll do an interview after the main part of the stream.

If I were Microsoft I'd let Twitch claim ownership of this event and just say I was a sponsor, that way it doesn't adversely affect the next games showcase that Microsoft themselves do. And definitely, please do it pre-recorded style and save all interviews for after the main showcase; just take what was done with the Zenimax Roundtable and use that interview format (as best as possible; devs are spread out all over the world) for after the main part of the show, keep the pacing closer to the July showcase, etc.

If they can't disassociate too much from the show (and again, not a content issue but a formatting/pacing issue with the drawn-out interviews in-between the game footage), then very concisely communicate that the next showcase will have a very different format and keep the long interviews for AFTER the main showcase.

...and please do it on Youtube. Pre-recorded formats obviously do better there, they should know this from their own content very recently.

12 minutes>state of play

A lot of games here were better than almost anything from the PS State of Play to be honest. However, State of Play's format was easily superior.

And the format means almost as much as the content itself. It's like in advertising: the adverts mean almost as much as the product itself. If it's a great product but advertised badly, reception might be tepid.

There were a lot of great games here but the format was not very good. And some games just had repeat footage we've seen earlier (though thankfully there was new gameplay footage for other games like Exo-Mecha). It won't adversely affect the games really, but it could adversely affect Microsoft's next showcase unless they make it very clear the format will be very different.
 
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Kuranghi

Member
Looks like MS has Indies locked up and on Game Pass too. It's going to come to a point where Sony simply can't answer all of the punches MS is throwing at them. It's going to be pure bedlam here when MS AAA exclusives start rolling out next year.

I don't disagree that they have more great looking "exclusive" indies than PS but most of these games could be played on a laptop without a discrete GPU so I don't really see how this would actually make people buy an Xbox. Are any of these games actually not on PC also?
 

reksveks

Member
I don't disagree that they have more great looking "exclusive" indies than PS but most of these games could be played on a laptop without a discrete GPU so I don't really see how this would actually make people buy an Xbox. Are any of these games actually not on PC also?
Think this gamepass trailer is telling you what they are selling people on laptops.

Omno, Astria Ascending, Art of Rally, She Dreams Elsewhere, The Fishing RPG and alot more.
 
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