MS Teases E3 Surprises, Promises X1 "Relentless Innovation"

As part of the latest Inner Circle podcast, Xbox marketing executive Aaron Greenberg teased Microsoft's plans for this summer's E3, what he called the "Super Bowl of gaming."

In short? Expect the unexpected.

"Expect a lot of surprises," Greenberg explained. "Expect us to talk a lot about games. And if you're an Xbox owner, I think you're going to leave really, really, really happy in the investment you made. And if you're undecided, we hope that you will look at what we deliver on games and want to buy an Xbox."

Greenberg went on to say that Microsoft's E3 planning is already well underway, and that the company feels "really good" about how things are coming together.

"We have some ideas to do things different at E3 this year that we haven't done before" -- Aaron Greenberg
Perhaps more interesting is another E3 tease Greenberg made, saying Microsoft plans to take something of a different approach to its showcase this year.

"We have some ideas to do some things different at E3 this year that we haven't done before," he teased. "I think we're going to take a little bit of a different approach to E3 this year. But I feel really good about it. It's been really exciting."

He didn't elaborate further on this new approach, saying those details will come later. Microsoft's E3 events usually involve various game developers, executives, and sometimes celebrities coming up on stage to talk about future games, products, and services.

Greenberg said Microsoft's overall ambition for E3 this year is to go "multiple steps" beyond what it did last year. Outside of Microsoft's E3 briefing itself, Greenberg teased that the company is also looking at new ways to reach out to and engage with fans at the show, though none were named outright.

the podcast, Greenberg spoke about how Microsoft plans to make the Xbox One a better console every month by way of monthly updates that introduce new features, such as Screenshots, which are coming in March.

"We truly believe that we have the opportunity to innovate and add new features and we've been doing that with our monthly updates," he said, adding that the Xbox Feedback website has been instrumental in letting Microsoft know what fans want to see the most.

"That's definitely influencing what we're doing," Greenberg said. "And we're going to be pretty relentlessly innovating. You can expect us to continue to invest in Xbox Live as the premium online network; continue to see us invest with more apps, more capabilities; people ask for screenshots, you saw that come through in the preview."

"We've just been month after month delivering what's been high on people's lists, and we're going to continue to do that," he added. "The team has a long list of things that they're still working on as well. Hopefully people that buy an Xbox One realize it gets better every month, and a year from now, the product that they have is going to be substantially better."

"That's our commitment; to continue to innovate and continue to make it better."

Greenberg also reminded gamers that we're less than two years into a console cycle that could last for a decade or longer. As such, he said gamers can expect better-looking, more feature-rich Xbox One games in the future.

"We're still very early in this generation; we're still really just starting to really showcase the power and the graphic fidelity of the platform," he said. "And we're just really starting to put together to innovate some really cool things with Xbox Live. Some of the stuff we're doing on the server side with Azure and the cloud and innovating that into the way games are designed is very, very cool. There's just so much opportunity to innovate."

"I'm excited. I've seen a little bit of the future, and I've seen some of the farther future stuff which is pretty awesome, too."

Greenberg is a Xbox marketing executive, so it's not too surprising to hear him hype new games and features without delivering specifics. All the same, it's clear Microsoft is working hard to improve the overall Xbox One experience month after month. The company's lineup of high-profile upcoming games is quite extensive, too, not to mention HoloLens.

What do you make of Greenberg's statements? Let us know in the comments below!