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Live from Xbox's E3 2018 press conference!
Last year Microsoft admitted that exclusive games were thin on the ground, so what does it have to show for it at E3 2018? (Well, beside no Crackdown 3?) Rumors suggest we could see more Forza Horizon and Gears of War news -- and hey, let's not discount the chance of a Halo appearance. The big show kicks off at 1PM PT / 4PM ET later today. Join us for liveblog coverage!
Watch Microsoft's E3 keynote right here at 4PM ET
It's time to find out what Microsoft has been up to with Xbox since last E3. We're on the scene in downtown LA already, but for everyone else not in Southern California, you can watch the show via the stream embedded below starting at 4PM Eastern. And be sure to follow along with our liveblog for our commentary! Will any of the rumors prove true? Will we see a new entry in the Halo series? Or maybe another Gears of War or Forza Horizon? A resurrected Scalebound? The latter is almost guaranteed to no happen, but for everything else, there's only one way to find out: watching along live.
'Unravel Two' is a cooperative sequel and it's out right now
Yarny is back, right here and right now. Unravel Two is the sequel to 2016's Unravel, an adorable and emotional platformer starring a tiny character made out of bright red yarn, developed by indie studio Coldwood Interactive. The new game introduces a second, blue Yarny. Players are able to control both characters or puzzle out the entire thing with a friend in co-op mode. And best of all, Unravel Two is available today on PlayStation 4, PC and Xbox One for $20, published via EA Originals.
How the PlayStation Vita compares to legendary handhelds
The PlayStation Vita is hanging on by a thread. Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida said in 2015 there was no hope for a follow-up to the handheld console, and since then, the Vita machine has been quietly winding down. Sony is halting production of physical Vita games across Europe and North America on March 31st, 2019, though Sony Japan will continue to churn out carts in the domestic market -- for now.
Avalanche Studios unveils nostalgic '80s robot shooter 'Generation Zero'
If you've caught the '80s nostalgia bug after Stranger Things, this could be the game for you. It's 1989. Machines have taken over rural Sweden, and it's unclear how or why. And it's up to a group of young adults to stop them. That's the gist of Generation Zero, an open-world shooter announced by Just Cause and Mad Max developer Avalanche Studios just a few days before E3 kicks off.
Zombie survival game 'Days Gone' hits PS4 next February 22nd
After being pushing the game into next year, Sony has announced when its zombie apocalypse game, Days Gone, will be released. Come February 22nd you'll be able to pick the PlayStation 4 game up at your favorite retailer (or download it online). To celebrate the news, Sony dropped a new trailer, rife with cougars, motorcycles and hostile human survivors. If that sort of thing is up your alley, or, if The Last of Us' themes and characters were a little too subtle for you, maybe you'll want to give this a shot early next year. Based on our early impressions of the game, though, it sounds like Sony delaying the game was for good reason.
'Tetris Effect' is PlayStation's trippy take on the classic puzzle game
If you've been looking for something to whet your appetite after finishing Rez Infinite on PSVR, Sony's got you covered. Tetris Effect is a trippy new project from rhythm game legend Tetsuya Mizuguchi, best known for Rez, Child of Eden and Space Channel 5. There's a lot going on in the short reveal trailer beow, but the game's website has a few descriptions that should help make sense of everything. The game will surround you with "fantastic, fully three-dimensional worlds that react and evolve based on how you play. Music, backgrounds, sounds, special effects -- everything, down to the Tetris pieces themselves, pulse, dance, shimmer and explode in perfect sync with how you're playing."
What to expect from E3 2018
The Electronics Entertainment Expo is basically New York Fashion Week for the joystick crowd, five days brimming with an overwhelming number of media briefings and new game announcements. And now, E3 is upon us once again. Despite Walmart Canada's leak of alleged product listings last month, there are still a lot of question marks for this year's show. As always, the Engadget crew will be on the ground, bringing you all the news as it unfolds in downtown LA. Sony has come out and said not to expect a new hardware announcement from its keynote this year. Microsoft and Nintendo both released new consoles in the past year, too, so barring any wild surprises, this should be the first E3 in a while that's all about software. You know, the reasons we buy gaming consoles and PCs to begin with.
‘Persona,’ ‘God of War’ named among year’s best concept art
While the E3 show floor might be a loud, raucous place where game publishers flaunt their vast wealth with gigantic booths, the show's Into the Pixel event is something altogether different. It's an intimate gallery-like setting where concept art from titles large and small is given the treatment it deserves before being shrunk down and put into a hastily assembled art book for a game's special edition. This year, Into the Pixel will feature works from titles including God of War, Persona 5, Homo Machina and Afterparty. If you like what you see, the works will be auctioned on eBay next week during the show.
Nintendo's 'Mario Tennis Aces' combines charm with surprising depth
Before Mario Tennis Aces appears in stores and on your Switch, Nintendo offered up a weekend of tournament play to whet appetites and convince you to preorder its first in-house sport title for the Switch. The demo sticks to purely tournament play, and while we didn't get the chance to play one another, there's something addictive here. That is, once you've figured out what the heck's going on. Two editors offer their very early impressions.
Microsoft discounts the Xbox One X for its E3 week sale
Microsoft is cutting the price of the 4K-friendly Xbox One X for the first time in what the company is calling its biggest Xbox sale of the year. All Xbox One models are dropping by $50, so the Xbox One X will set you back $449, while the Xbox One S costs $199 for the 500GB version, and $249 for 1TB. If you've been looking for a new controller, you can pick one up for $10 less.
All signs point to 'Fortnite' launching on the Switch
Since its launch last September, Fortnite has already appeared on PS4, PC, Xbox and your iPhone, but it's not stopping there. Rumors suggest a NintendoSwitch release, soon — which would go nicely alongside that Android port we've been promised this summer. First up, a leaked E3 document from 4chan yesterday outlined a showroom display for Nintendo's hybrid console lineup that includes Fortnite (alongside Mario Tennis Aces, Dragonball FighterZ and several more titles). Kotaku sources backed up the claims, and then hours ago Fortnite made another appearance, this time on the Korean game ratings board (GRAC), headed for the Switch once again. The filing doesn't give that much away, yes there's cartoon violence and in-game purchases, but you knew all that already, right?
'Assassin's Creed: Odyssey' takes the series to ancient Greece
Just hours after the leaked image of a keychain accessory revealed the game, Ubisoft has posted a quick teaser for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. With only five seconds of video, the teaser serves as a quick callback to the movie 300 as a Spartan-looking warrior boots his enemy off of a cliff, before flashing the game's logo with a familiar helmet in the middle. Along with the leak, an insider told JeuxvideoLive that this game follows Assassin's Creed: Origins with a trip to ancient Greece, where there's plenty of heroic tales, battles and mythology to mine. Kotaku reports other sources claiming that it should arrive during Ubisoft's fiscal 2019 period, and that it will include even more RPG-style elements than the last game. We'll find out more during E3
Nintendo’s E3 plans are all about ‘Super Smash Bros.’ for Switch
Nintendo released its plans for the upcoming E3 video game trade show and they're all about the recently announced Super Smash Bros. game for Switch. Attendees will be able to view a Super Smash Bros. invitational tournament, have a chance to take part in an exhibition play and get a crack at the game itself at Nintendo's booth.
'Rocket League' will die without cross-console multiplayer
All online games eventually die. But the difference between the original version of World of Warcraft and, say, Call of Duty: Ghosts is that WoW was more of a service on an open system (PC). Players were able to gradually migrate to its annual expansions while remaining a part of the overall population. Comparatively, CoD is a franchise with annual sequels on several different pieces of hardware, each with cordoned-off players who jump from one game to the next. But sometimes you don't want to stop playing a game just because seemingly everyone has moved on after 14 months. Rocket League developer Psyonix's Jeremy Dunham has an idea for how to fix these fractured player bases: opening up cross-platform multiplayer.
Your next favorite songs are the backbone of 'Metronomicon'
Rhythm games live and die by their soundtracks. The problem is, if you're holding a plastic instrument in your hand, you've probably played through the same songs over and over whether it's in Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Regardless of how advanced the gameplay is, then, at the end of the day, if you're tapping through Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" in one game, you might as well be playing it on any of the popular franchises. That's where The Metronomicon: Slay the Dancefloor makes a bold left turn.
Discover your rockstar stage persona in ‘The Artful Escape’
"It's not an artist's job to give people something they want, but to give them something they never could have imagined." These words are spoken to Francis Vendetti in The Artful Escape, an upcoming game that follows a young guitar prodigy on a psychedelic journey to discover who he really is. In the moment, the words are meant to help Vendetti find his own path as a musician, but it feels like they apply to the game itself -- a gorgeous, musical storytelling experienced disguised as a platformer.
In 'Fortnite,' building is just as important as fighting monsters
Epic Games' Fortnite, once described by company founder Tim Sweeney as Minecraft meets Left 4 Dead, has been six years in the making. That's a long time to keep someone excited about a game, but you can't fault Epic for not wanting to rush its latest Unreal Engine 4 project. And based on my first experience with Fortnite, it has the potential to be a solid survival game. Not everything here is about fighting or killing monsters, though, as your success in the Fortnite world will also largely depend on your building and exploring skills.
IndieCade's 'resist' theme at E3 holds a mirror to society
IndieCade CEO Stephanie Barish operates at the heart of the independent-development community, running shows throughout the year that highlight some of the most innovative, thoughtful and beautiful games the industry has to offer. This year, IndieCade sponsored the #ResistJam, an international competition "about creating games that resist oppressive authoritarianism in all its forms." The #ResistJam took place in March, not long after President Donald Trump unexpectedly signed a contentious, and ultimately unenforceable, executive order banning travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the US. Protests sprang up around the nation, and the jam was meant to give game developers a unique outlet for activism, organizers said.
‘The Last Night’ is a stunning take on 16-bit games for the 4K generation
Indie darling The Last Night stepped onto the big stage this week at E3. The game was announced as an Xbox exclusive during the same event that Microsoft officially revealed its powerful new 4K console: the Xbox One X. After those proceedings, we sat down with Odd Tales' Tim Soret for an update on the "cinematic platformer" and to discuss the recent controversy about his tweets.
