Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it would be streaming a special episode of Inside Xbox for the month of May that would be solely focusing on the ‘first look at the Xbox Series X gameplay’. The show had been hyped up a lot with claims that we would finally get to see a lot of gameplay footage from third-party developers for Xbox Series X, including the much-anticipated Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
However, after a solid start to the show with games like Bright Memory Infinite, Dirt 5 and 2nd Extinction, things quickly went south when most other trailers were just cinematic footage of the games and didn’t contain any gameplay whatsoever. At this point, people were already demanding the promised Assassin’s Creed Valhalla gameplay trailer but things got even worse when we got to that point.
The Assassin’s Creed Valhalla trailer started off with a familiar cinematic footage that was very reminiscent of the first trailer that we saw a few days ago. However, all hopes of getting the gameplay faded away quickly when the trailer just abruptly ended after a bunch of cutscenes with no signs of any real gameplay in sight.
Afterwards, the Inside Xbox show just reverted over to interviews with the developers of the previously shown games and obviously, people weren’t happy about that. And, as a result, the dislike counter on the video started growing at the rate of knots.
In addition to that, the official trailer video that Ubisoft posted afterwards was also getting bombed by downvotes, prompting them to change the name of the video to ‘first look gameplay trailer’ instead.
However, as many experts have pointed out already, the chances of seeing actual working gameplay for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at this point in it’s development were already pretty low and this was just a case of mismanagement on the part of the developer and the Xbox team as they had just set the expectations for the show too high with their announcements.
So, after receiving a lot of flak on Twitter from users, the Global Head of Marketing at Xbox, Aaron Greenberg responded to a tweet admitting the mistake that they had made by setting the expectations of the masses too high. In his tweet, he stated that had they chosen to market this event as the usual Inside Xbox monthly show, the backlash wouldn’t have been so bad.
Had we not said anything & just shown May Inside Xbox show like we did last month, I suspect reactions might have been different. Clearly we set some wrong expectations & that’s on us. We appreciate all the feedback & can assure you we will take it all in & learn as a team. ???
— Aaron Greenberg ??♂️?U (@aarongreenberg) May 8, 2020
After that, he admitted that it was their bad for not really getting things right and that they’ll surely take in the feedback and learn from this going forward. This really goes to show how far the Xbox team has come since the early disastrous days of the Xbox One.
The transparency and communication from the Xbox camp for the marketing campaign of Series X has been stellar and hopefully, this slight hurdle won’t detract the momentum that they’ve carried so far.
In addition to that, the Inside Xbox event also highlighted the fact that we’re currently facing unprecedented circumstances and with everyone working from home, including the developers, sorting out assets for these events and putting them all together is so much trickier right now.
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One really good thing that we got during this week though is the Xbox Series X boot sequence which, despite being overlooked by many, is arguably the best thing we have seen for a very very long time.
With the Xbox logo fading in in a similar manner to the original Xbox and that Windows 98-esque sound in the background, the new boot animation awakens a strange nostalgic feeling for a console that isn’t even out yet.
Nevertheless, if you are an Xbox fan and were disappointed by today’s Inside Xbox show, you have nothing to worry about since Microsoft has already promised more news for the months of June and July, with the latter containing announcements from Xbox Game Studios themselves. So, buckle up because we’re surely going to see more of Halo: Infinite, Hellblade 2 and many more in the coming months.
Furthermore, we also haven’t seen the unannounced cheaper Xbox Series S yet which would act as a budget model for those who want to get the next-gen experience without having to spend $600 on new hardware.
Are you excited for the upcoming Xbox events in the months of June and July or has this Inside Xbox made you tone your expectations down from team green? Let us know down in the comments below!