What to Expect from Microsoft’s Xbox Press Conference

Microsoft is ready to announce something big about its Xbox line. With Japanese tech giant Sony sitting this one out and Nintendo doing its usual direct, all eyes will be on the US tech giant Microsoft for E3 2019. Aside from Ubisoft and Bethesda, this is the one of the biggest events of this year where Microsoft is expected to reveal a whole host of new games alongside new hardware and also release more details on its brand new streaming service, which is dubbed as Project xCloud. It is a truly exciting moment for the company as Don Mattrick’s Xbox flubbed the launch of the last generation, but Phil Spencer, who is the chief of Xbox, has spent the intervening time building out new services and repairing the Microsoft’s relationship with the broader gaming community. This will be the company’s chance to dive into the new console generation headfirst and, ideally, regain some of the ground that it lost to Sony’s PlayStation throughout the course of the Xbox One/PS4 generation.

Microsoft will host its press conference on the 9th of June on Sunday, at exactly 1:00 PM Pacific Time. You can expect the conference to run for almost an hour, and it may even run a little bit longer.

You can watch the press conference on Microsoft’s YouTube and Twitch channels.

So, what can you expect from Microsoft’s latest press conference? Speaking from a purely software perspective, Microsoft will be headlining the show with Gears of War 5 and Halo Infinite, but there is bound to be a ton of other stuff in there too. You can definitely expect to see the title Ring of Elding in this event, which is a new collaboration between George R.R. Martin and From Software, as well as some of the other third-party titles the platform holders like to show off alongside their exclusives. Microsoft has been on a buying spree recently, so we might see a little bit of what the company has coming from some of its new studios, even if those games aren’t likely to come out for a while.

Now speaking from the perspective of the hardware side, you can expect to hear more about at least one new console, and there is a possibility of Microsoft announcing two consoles. That is a very well-confirmed rumor, and at this point, Microsoft is working on two new machines for the next generation: one entry-level device and one flagship device designed to go head to head with the PlayStation 5 console from Sony. What we are not sure about is that how much Microsoft will reveal about its new consoles. This could either be a brief confirmation of specs and a promise for more, which Sony recently did, or it could be a full-fledged reveal. Nobody expects these consoles to come out before 2020, so it would be a little early to show off a box.

Microsoft will also reveal details about its Project xCloud, which is the company’s answer to Google’s Stadia. As the company already has an a gaming platform and an established reputation in the gaming community, it can manage to do a better and more seamless transition when compared to what Google or Amazon might be able to achieve with their video game streaming service.