Before the E3 meeting, you may think of something: Microsoft, Bethesda and Devolver.

Microsoft's new mainframe

Sony is not here, and the main points of E3 every year are like Microsoft's one-man show. Earlier, there were rumors that Microsoft had prepared a new host. The news about the new host was blown-now it seems that it is entirely possible to be true.

Judging from the information obtained so far, two traditional hosts of the Scarlett family, Anaconda and Lockhart, may appear on E3. The specific configuration of this generation of mainframe is also widely expected-first of all, it corresponds to 4K, better display chip and larger memory, ray tracing and solid-state hard disk should also be available. The main difference between the two is GPU and memory capacity, which seems to represent high-end and low-end versions. On the other hand, the media. According to the revealed information, Lockhart will be a host without an optical drive.

According to past practice, if the new host is made public, this year's E3 may only disclose the official name and the main differences between them. The price will be announced about half a year before the sale. As for the release date, the high probability is between the second half of 2020 and 202 1 year.

In any case, once Microsoft's new host is made public, it means that a new generation of host wars will break out again-the first one in history is often not a good thing, and the first one will inevitably expose key information to the other party to prepare. Host manufacturers are always more impatient than anyone else-the most impatient Sega has moved westward, and Nintendo feels that it is directly announced that "we will not fight host wars" to seek spiritual victory.

While the remaining two companies in the center of the stage are still stuck in this pit, Microsoft seems to have every reason to announce a new console this year-God knows what Sony will use to protect the PS5 next year. Instead of betting on a masterpiece to overwhelm Sony's 2020, it is better to grasp this once-in-a-lifetime monologue.

If so, the core probability of this year's Microsoft software development lineup is "escort". Simply put, it is "who will save the strength for Scarlett and expand the territory?" Who else wants to stay and wait for Xbox One to retire? "You know, even if there is a" backward compatibility "setting," which host it falls on "will still affect the sales of the game.

Microsoft's key products are nothing more than three-Halo, War Machine and forza motorsport.

Among them, forza motorsport is relatively least likely to be making a new work. Prior to this, there was no indication that forza motorsport 8 would be released this year. However, considering this year's environment, people can't help but guess that from the tradition that forza motorsport is making "Work of Escort" and "Work of Platform", all three works of Xbox One have been completed, while Turn 10 experienced an "empty window period" for a whole year on 20 18. Once the new host is made public, forza motorsport 8 will announce the possibility of starting.

On the other hand, all kinds of news reports are showing that Halo: Infinite is a work for the next generation of mainframes. According to Brad Sams, Microsoft may choose to use PC platform for real machine demonstration at the press conference-because only PC can provide it with an environment infinitely close to the new host to run.

If the rumor is true, it means that even if the development work goes well, you won't play this new work until the new console is released, even though it may launch an Xbox One version.

Therefore, this last change is likely to make the War Machine stand. Judging from the huge warm-up, "War Machine 5" may be the last first-party masterpiece of Xbox One in the coming year-to bridge the gap between the old and the new, and to ensure that your host will not eat ash. After promising "more gameplay", its content is also worth looking forward to.

Other products

I'm more concerned about the imperial age. If all goes well, Age of Empires II Final Edition will be the last "derivative version" of Age of Empires II. Similarly, if it goes well, this decision version will drain the last remaining value of the old Empire 2 players-I mean, pay.

On the other hand, Empire 4 is much more difficult to figure out. Even though I was really looking forward to it, it didn't reveal any information that would help me form my expectations. When is it located (is it really World War II? )? How much progress can you make in the picture? To what extent can you inherit the "verve" of the first two works? What will its online community look like? Everything is a mystery and needs to be further answered by sarira at the press conference.

At last year's press conference, Spencer unveiled 1 1 studio. Now his patchwork lineup is very similar to Sony's R&D lineup in the early years of PS4, depending on who is the naughty boy, ready at dawn.

Rare is a company worth looking forward to. The sea of thieves is not as good as imagined. Rare needs a work to prove the research and development strength of its old studio. So who will be resurrected to protect the next generation, Banjo Bear or Bad Squirrel?

Obsidian is another interesting studio. You can say that their participation has filled the shortcomings of the research and development of the RPG type that Lion Head has not fallen behind. There are rumors that Playground is developing Fable of Ghosts 4, and there is also the possibility of Obsidian's participation. On the other hand, whether the "Worlds Beyond the Sky" they developed before the acquisition will be made public at the Microsoft conference or left to Epic as a PC game exhibition due to Sony's absence is also a point of view.

Finally, I have a little personal hope-in case, I mean in case, in case "Freelancer" can be remake or something, that would be great-you can say that I am dreaming in the sky, but there must be dreams, right?

Possibility of PC platform being burned by mainframe war

Not long ago, Xbox Studio announced that it would move most of their popular products to Steam. This means that Microsoft may have given up the strategy of laying out cloud games directly in Win 10 stores and started to support the company of old colleague G Fat instead. As far as Valve is concerned, the cooperation of Xbox has alleviated the dilemma that most important works have been monopolized by Epic for a limited time since the first half of this year, and the Steam platform is not connected.

There is an interesting detail about this cooperation. Microsoft seems to have reached a strategic cooperation with Valve, and XBOX now has a trend of deep binding with Steam in the future. This makes people wonder-will ——Steam be part of Microsoft's cloud game strategy? In other words, will the outpost of cloud games start in the form of camp integration?

All these are possible, which may mean a new & department-Sony & ampEpic vs Microsoft &; Valve, together with Apple and Google, finally formed an unstable quadrilateral pattern. Now it seems obvious that Valve has withstood Epic's most violent offensive, and whose mouth this bread will eventually fall into may depend on how Sony plays the cards.

Sony is not here.

The biggest attraction of Microsoft's pre-exhibition conference, in addition to the new host, is probably "Since Sony is not here, who will announce this year's masterpiece?" The answer, of course, is Microsoft, and two hours can explain the problem very well.

This work looks like many masterpieces, but most of them have been completely exposed-like King in Humanity 2 or Cyberpunk 2077. But there are still two topics that may be missed-from software &; Old man Martin's new game and Capcom's "mysterious new work", the latter has a clue that it will be a remake/restart of Dinosaur Crisis.

The former is more mysterious, and the information revealed at present includes that the code name of the game is "GR", and the name seems to be "Great Rune". It has been developed for three years (that is, it is likely to be made public this year), and the background is in northern Europe, which will be made public at the Microsoft conference. In the style of Hidetaka Miyazaki and his colleagues, this mystery will continue until the release of PV.

Bethesda and digital company are on the same day.

Before we talk about Bethesda, we must review the biggest joke of 2065 438+08 E3:

When we first saw the three dazzling and frightened shelter boys in the "Three Rooms", no one expected the ending to be like that. Judging from the continuous update of this game again and again today, Bessie is not ready to give up this pure online game whose reputation has been rotten to the extreme.

This probably indicates that the focus of this year's Bethesda conference may still be online games. The situation of the ancient scrolls OL is very good, and a new information piece has just been released. It is impossible for Todd Howard not to spend a lot of time talking about how much effort they have made for this "old game" and "for the players" and what new changes players like.

Accordingly, since B Society attaches great importance to this reputation, it is unlikely to surpass FF 14 MMORPG, and it is even more impossible for people who were originally transferred from various projects in the studio to return to their posts in a short time. In this case, your time to play "The Elder Scrolls 6" and the Star Domain will naturally be delayed.

This leads to Bessie's three most popular products at present-The Elder Scrolls 6, Star Field and Doomsday: Eternity. In recent interviews with many media, Todd repeatedly clarified that there will be no first two works this year, which is very logical. After years of development, the two signature works that have won the praise of the public are probably the greatest value of choosing a sideline station to become the escort of the host of the next era.

In this way, the burden falls on those who have skipped tickets for many years. Last year, E3 finally released Doomsday: Eternity. On the last day of last month, the game had drawn three rooms. Since the news of Quakecon's demonstration has been made public before, this year's E3 conference is most likely to open a slightly longer real machine demonstration. As the product with the most resources in our company, you hardly need to worry too much about its magnitude. This game is destined to change the game industry. At best, it's The Elder Scrolls 5, at worst, it's Radiation 76.

But if you think about it with your heel, it will never be just bad luck: eternity. Until E3 this year, Bethesda's new products have been losing ground. From several of their key products-"Fury 2", we can see that word-of-mouth is frustrated; "Wolfenstein Castle: The New Giant", sales declined; Radiation 76, eh ...

It seems that the only open game this year can only be "Wolfenstein Castle: New Blood", which is the last work of the trilogy plan of Wolfenstein Castle. No matter what the actual level is, it has to appear in the plan.

Let's look at the unused series: After the release of Shame 2, Todd and his colleagues repeatedly stressed that Shame is "impossible to restart", but I think it should be based on the popularity of Radiation 76 anyway, but the reality is those games that they originally planned to "focus on", such as Anger 2 and Radiation 76. The prey on the other side is not much different.

From this perspective, the existence of Group A becomes very subtle. It is a pity to move Shame out and restart it, but it is also a good way to consider-after all, the old IP has been defeated by Todd and his younger brothers who are "service game enthusiasts". As for what the new work "Shame" looks like, there is a high probability that it will not be out of line.

Of course, the new IP is not impossible. Group a has been idle since the shame 2 case was closed. If this studio is not used to develop the sequel to Shame, it is also possible to develop a low-cost product to practice.

Plagiarism may be another way-"Radiation 3" is good for me-it has a good reputation and is made by itself. There is no copyright dispute, and no old players will jump out and say "You don't radiate". Although the engine is a little old, the system is basically the same as Radiation 4, and you can play with patches and maps just to make a remastered version.

Before Radiation 3, maybe we can do a program called radiation 2? If they have the guts.

From this point of view, when radiation 5 comes out is a problem worth studying. The lesson of Radiation 76 may make them honestly come back to work as stand-alone, so the problem comes-it may be another company, even Bioware, and I believe they may be subjectively willing to do something to save their precarious reputation. But in Bethesda, I find it hard to believe how much spirit and resources they have to develop stand-alone games.

Of course, it's always a good idea to throw a big LOGO before the press conference is over.

Finally, about Developer-as we all know, they have had a good year, and Tatsu Yamashiro Zero and the observers have no big problems in word of mouth and quality-but I think most people, like me, had "wonderful performances" at the press conference two years ago, and they are more concerned about how to "play" this year than what they want to post. ...