Microsoft spent its conference reassuring gamers that it cares about their needs by focusing entirely on games. After the required brotastic Call of Duty and Forza updates, the presser got a bit more interesting with things like Sunset Overdrive, Crackdown, Phantom Dust, and the Xbone exclusive Scalebound from Platinum Games. Newly announced indie games Inside from Playdead of Limbo fame and Ori: The Blind Forest from Moon Studios added some much needed diversity, and a very brief Rise of the Tomb Raider teaser got me excited for a sequel to my favorite game of 2013.

On the whole, the Microsoft presser was solid, very safe, and gratefully free of chessy on stage banter, celebrity appearances, and other awkwardness. That said, there were no earth shattering surprises or killer reveals. The newly announced stuff is nice to be sure, but it just didn't have any punch or pizzazz to it. Hopefully Sony will liven things up tonight.

re: Ori: The Blind Forest - that looked incredible...lots of tugs on the heart strings.

"Microsoft Cancels Highly Anticipated Xbox Exclusive Scalebound"

http://www.pcmag.com/news/350922/micros … e-scalebou

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but exclusive Microsoft games right now include... Ori, and... Ori? Don't know, perhaps deep down Microsoft is committed to Sony because I really fail to see why someone would purchase an Xbox over a PS4 at the moment. Anyone?

Not that I'm interested in it, but doesn't the XBox One S have the better Blue Ray player/streaming capabilities? From what I heard that actually swayed quite a lot of people. However, when it comes to actual games, I don't feel either company has a leg up on the other; it's really a matter of preference for a few titles over another small batch of titles.

Exclusives have lost a lot of their impact IMO. I will say Uncharted 4 was great tho.

Sure, AAA titles come out for both systems. However, as a big fan of indie games, it seems like the PS4 has a distinct advantage. Games like "Among the Sleep" and other indie games are PS4 exclusive. I don't know if that's by choice or chance, but at any rate they are only for PS4. Similarly, EVERY SINGLE game released by Limited Run Games is PS4 exclusive (unless it was only released on the Vita). Also, there are a few AAA titles that I know are only PS4 -such as The Last Guardian and Bloodborne. So, for me at any rate, the choice is clear.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this, but could this be due to the remains of XBox's old parity clause? There was an old rule that if an indie game went up on PSN and the indie developer wanted to put it on XBox as well they had to go up at the same time. If I remember this was very inconvenient for Indie developers because they usually only had the money to produce for one platform, but would obviously want to port to the other when the money from the first platform started coming in.

Additionally, wasn't there also a monetary roadblock for developers to update their indie games on XBox Live? I can't help remember stories of games that were broken and because they were broken the developers couldn't make enough money to afford to fix the game because it costed x dollars to be allowed to update it.

If stuff like this is still in effect I could see how indie developers would favor Sony. However, as I said, there was a very big stink over these policies when the public found out about them (eons ago) and they very well could have been reversed by this point in time.

Does anyone else have knowledge of this? I'm really going off memories of years-old articles.

I think you're forgetting major Xbox/Windows exclusives like the Gears of War, Halo, and the Forza series. Also Killer Instinct, but that's hardly "major" like the others. MSFT said at E3 that they would no longer be making Xbox One exclusives and that all future exclusives would now come to both Xbox One and Windows 10.

Yes. The Xbox One S is the only video game system that can play 4K Blu Rays. Both the Xbox One S and PS4 Pro will support 4K streaming video services in the near future if they don't already.

While Limited Run games only produces physical games for PS4 and Vita (at least so far), the games they publish physically for these systems are rarely Sony exclusives and have often already appeared on many platforms before getting the Limited Run treatment.

Yes, I know that. However, I almost never purchase digital games thus I very much like the LRG releases. Again, if I had an Xbox I would be out of luck.