If they didn't know until recently, the only confirmed option is Halo:Infinite Season 3 in November or delay Deathloop to November (which would make zero sense). The best option is to go out and throw stupid money for time exclusive games to hold until the new year. Buying Bethesda was meant to get them out of the barren first party releases.
If their only big thing is Halo Infinite Season 3, they better make DAMN sure it's a real season in terms of genuine content. Campaign co-op, new campaign mode content, Battle Royale, Forge even. Make sure you've got a decent number of new maps and weapons this time, too.
Season 2 is already struggling because there was barely any new content, and it's not like other shooters won't be coming around Fall or live-service shooters not getting big updates around then. Season 3 is the absolute last chance for Halo Infinite to redeem itself in terms of rebuilding a large player count, IMO. Deathloop is kind of a non-starter in this type of conversation; it didn't do much in terms of sales on PS5 and gamers seemed to have very different opinions from the critics on that game.
They can't put the new COD in GamePass because that could be seen as taking advantage of the ongoing acquisition deal and violate terms there. So what's left, really? Gotham Knights? I kind of doubt they'll get that Day 1 in GamePass; not just because of the costs, but because I wouldn't be surprised if Sony already has some type of co-marketing deal set up with WB for that game (as they seem to have with the new Harry Potter), and such a deal would likely lock out the game from being on any competing subscription service Day 1. In fact I expect both Harry Potter and Gotham Knights to be among the 3P games that'll have pre-launch game trails on PS+ Premium, if anything.
Unless Hellblade II is ready for this year I don't think Xbox has anything else guaranteed as a lock outside of the next Forza Motorsport, and that is still speculation in terms of being a 2022 release. What a blunder.
Nah its a modern gaming issue. I understand your angle of announcing the release date and not delivering, sure - its a really bad look. Personally, Im not even a big Bethesda fan - my post was more about the state of modern gaming.
Develop times have been out of control for years now. Games take too long to make.
Elder Scrolls 6 likely wont be out for another 10 years. I mean, really? Ill be using walker and wearing depends before I play it.
The PS360 era (and gens before) had way way way more games. From all publishers.
Just from the PS360 era alone: Capcom was busting out hits every other month. There was tons of brand new action games and RPGs, racing, fighting. Devs had time to take chances on lower key stuff like 3D Bionic Commando, Folklore, 5 Armored Core games, Vanquish, Binary Domain, the as mentioned Oblivion/FO3/Skyrim in the same gen, etc. Where are these games in modern gaming?
Games of this quality and quantity are a rarity - it seems the big console makers rely on the indies to make up for the droughts - but the indies to me are mostly wannbe SNES games that dont come anywhere close to the originals they are trying to mimic. The industry has turned into one big waiting game.
Okay I can see where you're coming from when you get more specific like this. Yes the big AAA games are taking longer and longer to make; the lockdowns due to COVID didn't help, either. I think that's part of the reason these acquisitions have been happening, but in truth that's a redistribution of market labor. You either get all these additional teams pumping out a set number of games that are taking longer and longer to make (so longer stretches of no releases, then short bursts of a lot of releases), or you shift all those extra teams to help speed up production on a single title or two (so shorter stretches for game releases, but less games being released at a time).
Actually, what the industry needs is AI programming, as in machine-learning trained programming models that can auto-generate content creation, then you have specialists who "curate" that content to give it a more human, artistic flair. ML-powered programming simulators that can type code, dialog, generate graphics, build out polygonal meshes and models, etc. Think of stuff like GPT-3.
That would be the real ticket towards expediating AAA game development while maintaining or increasing the amount of content as a whole, although there are some ethical issues that might pop up (WRT worker displacement). But we're probably over a decade away from any of this really happening...if ever.
I seriously hope you're wrong
with a nick like that
