Thousands of lights twinkle in the dark.
It’s early June in the University of Southern California’s Galen Center in Los Angeles. Microsoft is holding its annual press conference during the first hours of the first day of a week devoted to the video game industry. The gamers, game journalists, and game executives in the audience are wearing plastic wristbands that glow with different colors that correspond with game demo after game demo, trailer after trailer. Everyone becomes part of Xbox’s games.
And that’s the point. More than ever, as a way to bring order to its house, Xbox is facing a crowd-sourced future.
The Xbox E3 2014 Media Briefing was 90 minutes of games. From Microsoft’s own huge franchises such as Halo and Forza, to partner’s mega titles like Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty, to indie darlings such as Threes and Ori. There were no execs talking about sales numbers, app partners, and other business details. During gaming’s most attention-grabbing days of the entire year, Microsoft was all about games.
“We have a value proposition that this is the only place to play all of the big games you want to play: Call of Duty, Destiny, Watch Dogs, Battlefield, Halo, Forza, Sunset Overdrive,” says Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president, devices and studios at Microsoft. “Within that, we feel really good about what we’ve done.”
Read the full article at Fast Company.