No live blog from me today, there are plenty of those out there already, but I am watching the live stream of the presser and will jot down some thoughts ands notes as it moves along.

Xbox One E3 – Welcome to the New Generation

  • There will be 13 new franchises exclusively for Xbox One
  • Redesigned Xbox 360 will get an updated design based on the look of Xbox One – available today.
  • Xbox Live Gold members, both new and current, beginning on 01 July 2013 will get two free game downloads per month to keep. Offer will be available until Xbox One is released 31 December of this year.  Includes Assassin’s Creed 2 and Halo 3 amongst others.
  • Will be over 100 games coming to Xbox 360 over the next year.
  • World of Tanks, which is apparently very popular on PC, is coming to Xbox 360 and will be free to play on Xbox Live
  • Max The Curse of Brotherhood, that is the Max of Magic Marker fame, to Xbox 360 as well.
  • Dark Souls 2 also coming to Xbox 360

With that the Xbox 360 portion of the media briefing was over and I am not sure it even took 5 minutes.

The remainder of the demos and reveals relate only to the Xbox One console.

  • Ryse – Son of Rome (Crytek) Avail at launch of Xbox One. Lots of comparisons to Saving Private Ryan on Twitter – not sure why myself.
  • Killer Instinct head to head fighting gets a revival on Xbox One.
  • Sunset Overdrive from Insomniac. An open world shooter that can change everyday based on what is happening with all the games players and it has lots of zombies.
  • Forza Motorsports 5 by Turn 10. Beautiful gameplay and the Driveatars feature which does away with AI drivers but learns from how you drive and builds human like responses. Your Driveatar races against the world while you are offline – learning more and evolving. Kind of spooky huh?
  • Phil Harrison announced that Indie Developers have made over 1 billion dollars on Xbox. Microsoft still committed to Indie games on Xbox One
  • Minecraft Xbox One Edition from Microsoft Studios. I have never really understood the draw of this game.
  • Quantum Break from Remedy was demoed during the Xbox one reveal event a couple of weeks ago. Graphics are quite amazing.
  • D4 also from Microsoft Studios is an episodic style mystery game and your detective can go back in time to look at events.
  • Project Spark – game development tool, games can be shared, voice activated, use Smart Glass to edit and create as well. What impressed me was how easily they moved between the console and Smart Glass as they literally threw together an initial environment for the game they were creating.

Intro to Project Spark

Marc Whitten comes on stage to talk about Xbox Live.

  • Smart Glass will not be able to start games, do gameplay timeline review, show leaderboards, achievements. Your game timeline will update as you play the title on the console.
  • Smart Match works to match you based on your reputation, skills etc.
  • Game DVR allows you to auto upload gameplay and then use Upload Studio by Xbox to add commentary, edit and then share it to the cloud for friends to see.
  • Gameplay Broadcast via Twitch and built into Xbox One. Kinect allows voice and video to become integrated. Friends can get involved and impact the games outcome during broadcasts.
  • Xbox Live will no longer have the 100 friends limit.
  • No more Microsoft Points but purchases will be in your local currency. This got a huge round of applause.
  • Anyone in your house can use Gold benefits even when you are not logged into the console.

More game announcements at this point.

  • DeadRising 3 from CAPCOM features an huge open world and is full of Zombies. Who knew they were so popular anyway? Smart Glass is incorporated for different actions such as calling in artillery support to kill the zombies.
  • The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt  from CV Projekt Red will have over 100 hours of gameplay with integrated voice commands via Kinect.
  • Battle Field 4 – Second Assault from EA and DICE looked fantastic
  • Below allows you to explore an open world for loot. Seems like “open worlds” is a common theme for Xbox One games.
  • 5 new studios being invested in by Microsoft for Xbox One game development

Of course the one franchise that you just knew would also be on Xbox One is Halo and Master Chief.

The briefing wrapped up with info about the consoles availability and cost:

  • Available in November 2013 (no specific date given).
  • Will cost $499.99 in the U.S., £429 in the U.K. and €499 in European markets.
  • Will include Xbox One console with a 500GB hard drive, Blu-ray player, built-in WiFi, the new Kinect, one wireless controller and a 14 day trial of Xbox Live Gold for new members.

So are you making the leap to the new console?