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You know that chaotic friend who canât stop dominating every conversation with their drama, even when thereâs more important stuff going on? Thatâs Xbox, that is.
This week, the games industry â or some of it, anyway â gathered in San Francisco for one of its annual rituals, the Game Developers Conference. Much was made of a âFestival of Gamingâ rebrand that, according to our reporter on the ground Giovanni Colantonio, didnât amount to much more than some inconveniently placed food trucks. Much was also made of the fact that international attendees might choose not to travel to Donald Trumpâs America for GDC this year, but the convention seemed plenty busy enough.
Plus ça change. Another regular fixture of GDC is Microsoft holding court at a presentation about whatever itâs pushing as the future of gaming this year. This year it ploughed on with a presentation about the next Xbox, Project Helix which told us little we didnât already know: It will be Windows-based, play PC games, and have very fancy graphics. Developers will have dev kits next year.
The plans for the console, and indeed for the GDC presentation, were surely locked in a long time ago, so the presentation isnât indicative of new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharmaâs thinking. All the same, due to the high-profile talk â and due to the drama and instability that has surrounded Xbox for the last few years â it was all anybody could talk about. (Well, apart from the RAM crisis. Weâll have more reporting on that soon.)
