X019 Happened. Here's the TL;DR

X019 happened the other day, which was a celebration of Xbox, PC gaming, and Microsoft’s attempts to win the console wars by reminding people that consoles are not, in fact, obsolete. The best way to do that, of course, is with exclusives, the event ultimately just featured a whole bunch of announcements of new exclusive titles (as ‘exclusive’ as they can be on PC, anyway) in a sort of E3 v2.

A lot of stuff happened and I’m only one man, so let’s do this lightning-round style.

Obsidian announced a new sandbox survival game called Grounded. The premise: you play a bunch of children who have been shrunk down to miniscule sizes, who then has to survive the average suburban backyard – including dealing with spiders, ants, and other nasties that might get in your way. It’s supposed to come out sometime this spring.
Tell Me Why is the latest game from the creators of Vampyr and Life is Strange. It’s a story-driven mystery game whose big selling point is that it stars a pair of twins, one of which is a transgender man. Apparently, they worked with GLAAD to deliver an “authentic representation of the trans experience." It’ll be three episodes long and will come out next summer.
Rare is doing the Sea of Thieves treatment to high fantasy with something called Everwild. It’s got a real Miyazaki/Breath of the Wild feel to it, and Rare has said that it is “focused on building an experience that allows for new ways to play in a natural and magical world”. No release date, no other real details.
A whole bunch of new games are coming to the Xbox and Games Pass. Games Pass specifically is getting a bunch of Final Fantasy games (at some point in the not immediate future), while Xbox players will soon be able to enjoy the Yakuza and Kingdom Hearts sagas for themselves. Only like 15 years too late but I guess better late than never?
Halo Reach is joining the Master Chief collection on December 3. You can buy it individually for 10 bucks, or it comes bundled with the whole $40 USD collection.
Wasteland 3, the isometric post-apocalypse story-based RPG by inXile Entertainment, will be launched in May 19 of next year. You might recall that inXile Entertainment was one of the studios Microsoft gobbled up last year during their giant acquisition binge, but Wasteland 3 will still be coming to Mac, PS4, and Linux as well as Xbox and PC. That’s nice.
A buncha indie games are coming along too. Kartrider: Drift, West of the Dead, Drake Hollow, and Last Stop, if any of those mean anything to you.
Oh, and Ninja Theory’s upcoming multiplayer game, Bleeding Edge, will start closed betas on February 14. How thrilling.

Anyway. A bunch of these announcements have trailers on the web, which you can find on this playlist if you want. Otherwise, Xbox players can just bask in the good news – they’ve earned it.