Xbox briefing @ Gamescom 2015 – Was it any good?

Gamescom 2015 kicked off in style with Xbox taking to the stage to bring us the latest news, videos and demos covering Microsoft’s most powerful console. But did Phil Spencer and friends bring us what we wanted, or have Xbox gamers been left needing more?

Well, it certainly was not the latter, for Phil and his mates near on nailed it perfectly. In fact, if you hadn’t already jumped in with Xbox, then we’re really not sure what else you can be waiting for!

With the German warm-up act swiftly pushed to one side, it was left to Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer to open the show with a taste of Quantum Break (releasing on April 5th 2016), a world premier trailer for the awesome looking Crackdown 3 and the showing off of the huge mysterious 4 player co-op affair, Scalebound.

From there, a couple of non-gaming bombs were dropped. Not only will an Xbox One Chatpad be coming in November, but by the end of the year, ALL future Xbox 360 Games With Gold titles will be backwards compatible on Xbox One – a feature which will no longer by restricted to Xbox Preview members, and the all new Xbox One experience will be in full flow with the addition of a new interface powered by Windows 10. Moving into 2016 and those who don’t currently have a DVR set top box, will be happy to hear that Xbox One will be able to record your favourite shows whilst you game away! The next few months are looking like being an awesome time for One owners.

Back into the games and our favourite ID@Xbox Uncle Chris Charla was waxing lyrical about Thimbleweed Park, The Escapists Walking Dead, freaky We Happy Few and the awesome looking Worms WMD. With the Xbox Game Preview programme being enlarged to take on the upcoming Sheltered and our personal fav Cobalt looking like a sure-fire hit, the games that Xbox had so far talked about were all of the highest quality.

With a world premier trailer of Dark Souls 3 leaving us wondering how the hell we’re going to be able to cope with another Dark Souls title and FIFA 16 details including the now standard FUT Legends info dropping left, right and centre, the only thing that could put a bit of a dampener on things was the massive hype thrown into the Halo 5 Championships. We’re sure it’ll appeal to many, but we’d much rather play games rather than watch someone else do so – although I guess we’re not the biggest Halo fans either! The limited edition Halo 5 Xbox one console would go down nicely though.

A Just Cause 3 trailer, Rainbow Six Siege video and Dan Greenawalt chatting about rain and leagues in Forza 6 picked things up yet again before the Rise of the Tomb Raider seemingly brought the show to a brilliant conclusion. With Phil back in place to hammer home the fact that this is the greatest line up in Xbox history (something we are never going to dispute), surely we’re not the only ones to find the closing tease of Halo Wars 2 by 343’s Bonnie Ross a little disappointing though?

Overall though, a cracking show that has us chomping at the bit for the rest of 2015 and beyond!

Bravo Xbox. Bravo!