E3 2017 Excites Gamers with New Games and a New XBox

Video Transcript

Alyana: The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo just wrapped up in Los Angeles, and gaming seemed to steal the show this year. For more, now, I’m joined by KTVU techs expert Ryan Eldridge from Nerds on Call. Hey, Ryan.

Ryan: Hey. How you doing?

Alyana: Good. Good to see you.

Ryan: So the big news this year was that Xbox.

Alyana: Yeah. So I was gonna say, so until now, Microsoft hadn’t really released a lot of information about their new system called the Xbox One X. First, what are your thoughts on the name? I’ve heard some criticism regarding the name and the big price tag. Five hundred bucks is a lot.

Ryan: Yeah. So this Christmas, we’re gonna have a lotta choice between the new Xbox, the Switch that came out here earlier this year, and, of course, the PlayStation Pro that came out last year. But here’s the interesting thing. Xbox kind of ignored the future of gaming, where Sony is really betting hard on VR. Xbox just sort of ignored it this year. No new VR games coming out. But for the PlayStation 4 Pro, they’re gonna be coming out with a Skyrim. And Skyrim was one of the biggest games a few years back. So they’re gonna do a VR version of that, so us nerds are super excited about that.

But the Xbox One X, you’re right. It’s a pretty hefty price tag at $499, but it is, literally, the most advanced gaming console ever created. It’s got six teraflops of power, which anyone outside of the nerd community has no idea what that means. But it’s super fast. It’s gonna be able to play not just your Xbox One games, but also your Xbox 360 games and, for the first time ever, the original Xbox games. So if you’ve got a big collection of old Xbox games, you’ll be able to play that on the new platform, and that’s pretty cool.

Alyana: If you haven’t already sold them or gotten rid of them, right? I know that’s huge though.

Ryan: Yeah. If you still have the… they’ll likely do like they did with the 360 is if you still have the discs, you’ll be able to put it in the drive just to confirm that you own it. And then they’ll download it virtually, so you won’t need to hold onto the discs.

Alyana: Oh, nice. So do you think then the Xbox will sell more than the PS4?

Ryan: Oh, this year, for sure. So Xbox has been really building up just a huge library of games over the last few years, and the fact that it’s gonna have that backward compatibility is gonna bring a lotta users back to the platform that maybe veered off into the PlayStation platform. And E3 this year, PlayStation and Sony were just kinda blah. They really just showed the games that they showed last year from God of War to some of the zombie games and things like that. There wasn’t really a lot of excitement going on in the Sony booth, although it still looks fantastic. But the Xbox really stole the show coming out Sunday and announcing their new Xbox just before anybody else could get a word in edgewise. It was pretty cool.

Alyana: And you bring up so many… Obviously, they’re remaking one of the best video games of all time. I know that’s one of the big announcements that came out of E3, so talk to us about how exciting this is for gamers. I’m not familiar with the game, but I know many people are and are very happy to hear about this.

Ryan: Yeah. With God of War, I am a huge fan of God of War. I’ve played just about every single one. I borrow a PlayStation from somebody because I’m a Microsoft fan when it comes to the video games. But God of War is just a franchise that will literally make people go out and buy a PlayStation just to play it, and the new game looks phenomenal. We’re hoping that it’ll be released on time and we’ll be able to get our hands on it real soon, so that will be pretty exciting.

Alyana: All right. Well, you’ll have to update us on all of the gaming news later on once you get your hands on some of those games and the new systems, and tell us how they’re all working.

Ryan: Oh, you bet.

Alyana: All right, Ryan. Thanks so much.

Gamers everywhere eagerly await the new games and consoles previewed at E3, an annual gaming entertainment expo held in Los Angeles. This year has seen big news from Xbox (hit: they’ve released a new console!), a slew of new games from both Xbox and PlayStation, and new releases in big platform names like Call of Duty and Battlefront II.

Ryan chatted with Fox 2 in Oakland about all the latest gaming news out of E3 2017.