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Phil Spencer acknowledges ‘it’s been too long’ since Xbox’s last big first-party game

Pelta88

Member
“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,” Phil Spencer said on the Same Brain videocast.

“And as an industry we have fewer games this holiday than we’ve had in a while, when you just think about the launches. Call of Duty is coming, God of War is coming – which is great – Nintendo’s had a good year. But in general I would say we’ve been a little light"

“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.”

 
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lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
Bored GIF
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Blah Blah Blah Talk GIF by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service


I’m sure he’s said the same in the past?

There’s only so much learning you can do Phil.

Surely at this point you know that 0 FP games in a year is unacceptable?

Sony and Nintendo had to deal with covid, and the worst year from either of them was Sony last year (who *only* released Returnal and Ratchet).

In b4 ‘but it takes tiiimmmmee’.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Given all the studios under them it’s only a matter of time before the games start rolling in.
I guess if you bought a Series X it sucks not seeing much first party content. Honestly I expect Sony to hit a wall as well, but it looks like they’re buying up timed exclusives to fill in those dead spots.
 

Roberts

Member
If you are only into AAA games, Xbox first party output wasn't just shit but non-existant, but....

Grounded is slowly turning into my personal GOTY. As Dusk Falls (I guess it is second party?) was a fun cop-op experience. I didn't really like FH5: Hot Wheels dlc all that much, but it feels like a separate game and it has its fans. And I'm pretty confident Pentiment will kick my ass hard. Also, some great time exclusive indies this year. I'm fine with this.
 
Well it's good to hear Phil acknowledge the lack of first party games. Hopefully they start to work on more regular releases that are competitive.

All he ever seems to do is acknowledge it. He's been acknowledging it since he was head of MS Game Studios.

If acknowledgment alone is the low bar that is acceptable for Xbox fans then they deserve this drought of first-party AAA bangers.
 
Without that Bethesda acquisition, their future output was a bleak wasteland.

Hard to tell if Bethesda can maintain the kind of output they had from 2008-2020 (Doom, Fallout, Dishonored, Prey, Skyrim, Rage, etc.) or if they follow in the footsteps of other big acquisitions and slowly wither into a husk of their former selves (Rare, Bioware, Psygnosis, etc.)

I reckon MS will get at least 1 wave of quality titles from them before anything (if at all) starts to degrade.
 

supernova8

Banned
Blah Blah Blah Talk GIF by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service


I’m sure he’s said the same in the past?

There’s only so much learning you can do Phil.

Surely at this point you know that 0 FP games in a year is unacceptable?

Sony and Nintendo had to deal with covid, and the worst year from either of them was Sony last year (who *only* released Returnal and Ratchet).

In b4 ‘but it takes tiiimmmmee’.
Yeah I swear he just says some variation of:

"We hear you loud and clear"

and then goes silent (on the topic of actual first party output) before surfacing a year later to say:

"We get it, we want to see first party games as much as you do. We're committed to that"
 

SJRB

Gold Member
How tiresome must it be to constantly swing your big acquisition dick around buying studios left and right, and at the same time having to constantly apologize for poor content.

iu


Where are the games, Phill? At some point buying all those studios is going to pay off, right?
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
Imagine if Bethesda wasn't bought by MS. I originally thought the low output of first party towards the end of last gen was so the teams could concentrate on flooding this gen with releases. Turns out they had poor management. Still do.

They need to look at some of their studios that actually work like the Coalition & Playground to see what they are doing right and learn from them. Probably promote a few to replace the obvious deadwood.
 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
Interesting to see him list Covid as an excuse and not try to use it as a reason.

There's a bit of a difference between the two.

I mean, some of us have been saying this for months. MS seems to be the only one really effected the most by Covid. Can't blame Covid only for having issues releasing games.
 
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TrueLegend

Member
Well delays are good in this instant. We all know Bethesda's games will still launch with bugs. What most ppl seem to miss here is that even though R&C was a great visual next gen game and Returnal was a far better game for the platform itself those two cant stand together against might of Forza horizon, sea of thieves alone could crush them both in terms of money and reach. Its the PS+ that has changed the tides. Microsoft cannot boast about gamepass in the same manner now as the only advantage of gamepass over PS+ was day one first party titles.
 
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Banjo64

cumsessed
Anybody with sense would have moved to pc or PlayStation by now.
Still has its place. For me PS exclusives aren’t as good now as they were during the PS3 era. I’ve got all 3 but would probably be more than happy with my Xbox+Switch combo and then just pick up a cheap PS5 at the end of the gen when all of their first party only cost £10.
 

zomboden

Banned
Looking forward to The Game Awards this year for some Q1-Q2 2023 announcements from both companies. As somebody who doesn't like Halo and especially doesn't like racing games this has been a bad generation for me so far. I've got my eyes on a PS5 if things keep up this way.
 

SCB3

Member
Without that Bethesda acquisition, their future output was a bleak wasteland.

Hard to tell if Bethesda can maintain the kind of output they had from 2008-2020 (Doom, Fallout, Dishonored, Prey, Skyrim, Rage, etc.) or if they follow in the footsteps of other big acquisitions and slowly wither into a husk of their former selves (Rare, Bioware, Psygnosis, etc.)

I reckon MS will get at least 1 wave of quality titles from them before anything (if at all) starts to degrade.
I mean Obsidian and inXile surely will help there as they have experience with those IP

Xbox are at this weird rebuilding stage it seems, the Xbox One failure still overhangs and it needs to really be getting out bangers, they do have a few IP's that can be massive hits in the right hands and this makes me wonder, What does Activision Blizzard bring exclusively to Xbox? World of Warcraft finally getting its console version perhaps?
 
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