Microsoft’s head of gaming Phil Spencer has acknowledged on the Same Brain videocast that it has been a really quiet year for first-party Xbox games.
Specifically, only five titles will have been published by Xbox Game Studios this calendar year, with only one of them being a new game developed internally – this month’s “Pentiment”.
The others are the indie-developed “As Dusk Falls” which launched to mixed reviews, DLC for “Forza Horizon 5,” a re-release of “Age of Empires IV,” and the wide release of “Grounded,” which has been playable in Game Preview for two years. Spencer says:
“One thing we’ve definitely heard loud and clear is it’s been too long since we’ve shipped what people would say is a big first-party game. We can have our excuses with Covid and other things, but in the end, I know people invest in our platform and they want to have great games.”
Xbox’s Game Pass has differentiated itself by having the company’s big first-party exclusives on Day One, and whilst they had a strong one-two punch with “Forza Horizon 5” and “Halo Infinite” late last year, this year the line-up has been anaemic.
Spencer says the 2023 line-up will be far stronger for Xbox with the pushed “Starfield” and “Redfall” on the way. Spencer also says Xbox will be doing “a lot more work” on PC with a big update for its Xbox app coming in a few weeks.
