I agree. The format that Nintendo settled on a few years back is genius. Nintendo Direct acting as a showreel showing actual gameplay as well as CGI (Yes, MS I'm looking at you), followed by relatively deep dives into each game. Sells games waaay better than any 30 second trailer in a presentation ever can because you see what you're actually getting.
I came away from the MS conference loving the fact that there were so many games coming (because I've not bought an XBone due to lack of games I'm interested in) but totally frustrated that I had no idea how ANY of them played.
I'm not sure if there was an intent to do more deep dives on the Inside Xbox on the following day; I tuned in and out of that a few times but never encountered any actual gameplay, although I could have just missed it! Did anyone watch that properly and find it in a more Treehousey format? I think I hears that they were at least showing some Gears 5 then, with (IIRC) a focus on the Escape mode (In the context that I largely heard that people were disappointed that they weren't showing the campaign!); was that at least a Treehouse-like portion?
I think that might be the way Microsoft need to go, but there's a difference between two hours of Inside Xbox and, what, fifteen hours or so of Treehouse?
Also, one minor new thing this year that I think was a genuinely useful idea was the "Hey, this'll come up in Treehouse if you want to know more" icon in the Direct. It's a big reassurance that you know that the trailer isn't
all there is to show. They made a point of underlining it for Animal Crossing, too, which was another good move. Imagine if we had a few such icons in the MS conference pointing people to Inside Xbox? I think that'd help.
I guess there is one other difference where the problem may simply be that I didn't watch enough Inside Xbox, but to me, the Inside Xbox presenters came across as
hosts - placing themselves in the position of
finding out about the game for the audience, while the Treehouse folk came across as
gamers - placing themselves in the position of
introducing the game to the audience. I think part of that comes from the fact that the Treehouse people generally are
already familiar with the game, they can contextualise what they're doing. Of particular note, I think, was the few times yesterday where they were demoing a game themselves without any reps from the company there - understandable, of course, because indies can't necessarily make it to E3 - and they were still able to present the game clearly and with understanding. I assume when indies are involved they do a decent bit of homework so they know how to present it best.
I think Microsoft (and indeed Sony, for the future) could get there, but they need to figure out a way of shedding their underlying corporate-ness to really get it right. When they're talking
to us rather than
at us, we'll get somewhere.