Xbox's Riot Games deal was the biggest announcement last night | Opinion
Christopher Dring
Head of Games B2B
Monday 13th June 2022
Making any form of commentary on Xbox game showcases is quite difficult these days.
In what was a solid conference filled with interesting titles, the company is doing all the things it said it wants to do. It wants to push Game Pass as its primary consumer proposition, and it did that after every single trailer. It wants to increase its popularity in Japan, and with some Game Pass deals and signing Hideo Kojima's next game, it is continuing to push in that direction.
It wants to be seen as multi-platform, and there were a number of big PC titles, headlined by Diablo IV, during the event. And in Minecraft Legends, Microsoft has announced the biggest Nintendo Switch game of the last few weeks, too.
The best I could really say about the showcase is that Xbox is being consistent between what it says it wants to do, and what it is actually doing.
In terms of the biggest announcement, I suspect Hideo Kojima making a cloud game for Microsoft will go down as the biggest surprise. And Starfield was unquestionably the biggest game of the show (and one of the biggest games on the release schedule full stop).
But for me, the most significant announcemet arrived early on in the event, and it was the news that Microsoft is teaming up with Riot Games.
To recap, Riot's range of mobile and PC titles are coming to Xbox Game Pass. League of Legends, Wild Rift, Legends of Runeterra and Teamfight Tactics are all free-to-play games, but subscribers will be able to unlock an array of cards, agents, characters and other perks, which they'd usually access via microtransactions.
Riot Games titles are coming to PC and mobile game pass
Xbox has been experimenting with free-to-play and Game Pass for
Read more on gamesindustry.biz
