Xbox at E3: Halo Infinite leads massive first-party deluge of Xbox, PC games

Enlarge / Moments before the beginning of the Xbox press conference at E3 2019. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

LOS ANGELES—Without its direct console rival Sony anywhere in sight at this year’s E3, the team behind Xbox took advantage with a Sunday press conference that revolved around games, games, and more games. In particular, Microsoft finally began paying forward its investment in various acquisitions over the past couple of years to make a huge Xbox Game Studios statement in the form of legitimate gameplay variety.

Even with that in mind, nobody in the room was surprised to see one game elicit the loudest response: Halo Infinite, now confirmed for “holiday 2020” as a launch title for the code-named Xbox Scarlett console.

“We lost. We lost everything.”

• 

  He’s back.

Unlike the game’s E3 2018 tease, this year’s reveal revolved around “game engine footage” that bordered on the kind of stuff you’d expect from a pre-rendered sequence. This quality came primarily from lengthy zooms on an unnamed civilian stuck floating in space on a UNSC vehicle. The trailer begins with this character waking amid booming alarms, which he deactivates by clumsily twisting a valve in a ceiling compartment.