Phil Spencer: Xbox Plans to Release a 1st-Party Blockbuster or Highly Anticipated Title Every 3 Months - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 December 2023 / 6,984 Views
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in an interview with Famitsu was asked about the upcoming lineup of games from first-party Xbox studios and Spencer says the plans is to release a major game about every three months.
Over the next two to three years, we plan to release a first-party blockbuster or highly anticipated title roughly every three months," said Spencer. "We are very excited and looking forward to that."
He admitted there was a gap in big releases in 2022, but did mention for 2023 Xbox first-party titles include Starfield, Forza Motorsport, and Hi-Fi Rush.
Spencer stated in the past Xbox had four main IPs - Halo, Gears of War, Forza, and Fable. However, Xbox is "expanding into a wide range of projects." He did tease Gears of War is "moving in the right direction" and he looks forward to sharing what The Coalition is working on.
Microsoft in October did complete its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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MS + Zenimax + Acti + Blizz should certainly make this possible, especially if you stretch the terms 'Blockbuster' and 'Highly Anticipated' a little.
It's not really about stretching the definition but here he's speaking of goals he try to achieve so of course all he can do is set the condition and context to be able to create 4 title with "blockbuster" and "highly anticipated" potential /year. Of course weather or not a game succeed in getting those tags can only be judged after the facts.
I'm not expecting them to succeed everytime with every title just like Redfall failed this year but, the budget, manpower and support should be there to make it possible and likely.
Unless you are very confident (and historic doesn't seem to favor that in this case) for you to achieve 4 blockbuster titles you would have to release more than 4 intended blockbuster titles per year. This year from the 4 titles they released only 2 could qualify as blockbusters and well even Forza did underperformed.
Sure, but if we take into account ABK output we could already count in Diablo 3 and MW3 at least towards highly anticipated. Now it's fair discard those, when assessing this year for Xbox, but still an example of what to expect in the near future.
Next year : Ara history untold, Flight Sim 2024, Towerborne, Hellblade 2 and Avowed.
out of those I think Ara and Towerborne does not aim to be considered as such at least not with general consumer.
Flight sim is debatable. Hellblade 2 I think can already be qualified as highly anticipated and Avowed is certainly close.
There's also CoD 2024 if MS does not change to a 2 years cycle in the mean time.
So it'll be close, Xbox might also have kept 1 or 2 announcement or release date announcement for 2024 for the Game awards so maybe they will hit this goal as soon as 2024.
Unless you want to count DLC for Diablo and other Blizzard stuff I wouldn't count much new titles from them. And ABK yes we can ignore the highly antecipated on the part of high scores but on sales there is no question yearly CoD will certainly still be there and make the list needing at most other 3 big sellers.
I think Hellblade 2 is more antecipated due to going exclusive than anything, considering sales and all for the 1st one (which I liked) but we may see when it release.
Should be quite easy to pull off with the number of studios they now own. Just looking at the in-development AAA games they have announced already, we've got Fable, Clockwork Revolution, Avowed, Outer Worlds 2, Indiana Jones, Hellblade 2, State of Decay 3, Elder Scrolls 6, and Perfect Dark, and I'm not even counting the multiplatform yearly CoD games, nor AAA 1st/2nd party games that are believed to be in development based on leaks , such as Dishonored 3, Forza Horizon 6, Gears 6, Halo codename Tatanka, TES 4 Oblivion remaster/remake, Project Kestrel, and Ghostwire Tokyo 2, among others. They have so many AAA games in development currently that it seems likely that most quarters will have more than one AAA release from Xbox first and second party.
It should already have been easy for them to do so with what they had before acquiring ABK, yet here we are…
Well, you have to remember that they only started acquiring studios 6 years ago, and the average AAA game takes between 4 and 5 year to develop these days. On top of that, several of those early acquisitions in 2018 and 2019 had to finish multiplatform contractual obligations before they could begin working on Xbox exclusives, Obsidian, inXile, Double Fine, Compulsion, and Ninja Theory all released games or DLC's that were multiplatform after Xbox acquired them, The Outer Worlds, Wasteland 3, Psychonauts 2, We Happy Few DLC, and 3 VR games/episodes from Ninja Theory.
On top of that, there were some development issues that plagued a few of their new acquisitions and studios and slowed up their first Xbox exclusive, notably among them are Playground's RPG team which is developing the new Fable, Undead Labs having some issues growing from AA on SoD 2 to AAA on SoD 3, The Initiative deciding to restart development on Perfect Dark and bringing in Crystal Dynamics for co-development, and Obsidian deciding to do a partial reboot on Avowed partway through development.
However, in spite of everything, Xbox did manage to deliver truly AAA games in the final 2 quarters of the year in 2023, Starfield in Q3 and Forza Motorsport in Q4, and based on what is announced currently and what is rumored for release next year, all 4 quarters next year should not only have a AAA release from Xbox first party, but also several smaller games. It seems likely that Xbox will be able to achieve their promised release cadence going forward.
Shouldn't be too hard when you own a third of the industry.
Saying that for like 3 years, but yes if you increase your studio count 10 fold it should happen.
Very True. Xbox growth is Just absurd, they went from like 5 studios to over 30!
Yet barely anything to show for it.
There’s something uniquely strange happening on their management side.
They released more than 4 games this year.
Should be an attainable goal with how many studios they have now. They achieved it in 2023 and already have 5 games lined up for next year.
They have over thirty studios and they can count COD. If they from some reason can't make it they can always buy more.
With the number of studios they have now, this won't be hard. This year they had Forza, Redfall, and Starfield.
2024, tentatively:
Stalker 2
CoD 2k24
Hellblade 2
Flight Sim
Avowed
Lots of other potential 2024 releases.
Aw don’t be scurred and delete
They gona put that AI company working fast. Shhh no one is suppose to know here about it😏
It's a bit creepy how obsessed you are with Trunks.
Only a month ago I saw you trying (and utterly failing) at creating a conspiracy theory over Trunks not writing an article about Spider-Man 2/Mario Wonder receiving a 90+ on Metacritic despite the fact that Trunks has never written an article about an individual games critical score before based on Metacritic.
Give it a rest. You're embarrassing yourself.
Same talk every year, gonna be the best year ever, and only mediocre games get released...
Well, at least sometime the several companies they keep buying will eventually start getting good games out.
Mediocre games? wtf you on about?
Maybe xbox releases this gen.
Since when were games rated in the 80s, now considered mediocre?
Console warz nonsense.
If I said this in a Sony thread, I'd be forum banned. Crazy how this gets a blind eye from the mods.
I'm surprised this still surprises anyone.
I don't think that's possible. They will still need to buy at least EA, Ubisoft and CDPR to achieve that.
Well he also put EA and Ubi to improve the odds.
Oh, I see. They have to buy all of them. That'll certainly do it.
4 "1st-Party Blockbuster or Highly Anticipated" games per year, strong words...
Ok Microsoft, I hope you create games that capture my interest and run on my PC. MS hasn't been able to impress me for over 10 years, will that change? I legitimately don't know.
