Today is a huge day for gamers, as we’ve finally reached Microsoft’s rumored “night of mic drops.” (It’s nighttime somewhere.) The show will obviously have a large focus on Halo Infinite, but it’s an hour long show purely focused on games, so there’s plenty of time to show off a bunch of titles, from Microsoft first-party studios games to third-party developers showing off things “optimized for Series X.” Microsoft’s executives have maintained that this showcase will not feature any hardware or service announcements, so don’t expect an Xbox Series X price or release date reveal just yet.
The show officially kicks off at 9 am PT/12pm ET, but there’s currently a pre-show running featuring Summer Game Fest’s Geoff Keighley along with a few guests from other outlets. After the hour-long show there will be a post-show with even more reveal and conversations that should offer additional details about some of the games we see.
While yes, we are a PlayStation site, we still think it’s important to watch the Xbox Series X games showcase, for a couple of reasons. First is that there are sure to be at least a few third-party games shown off. As in first-party E3 showcases of years past, this show will certainly provide us with a few peeks at games coming to the PS5 as well.
The second is to get a sense for how Sony might “respond,” with the back and forth between Microsoft and Sony propelled by these streams. Sony’s original PS5 reveal stream was in part a response to the third-party Xbox Series X showcase earlier this year, and much of Microsoft’s marketing for the Xbox Series X has been centered on Microsoft’s services, rather than on specific next-gen console exclusives.
Sony is rumored to have a PS5 State of Play coming up on August 6th. While that’s yet unconfirmed, the timing makes sense both from the perspective of following up this Xbox event and considering next-gen consoles are just four months away with still lots left to learn about them.
