Microsoft’s first party efforts have traditionally been considered weak- they are, at the very least, far weaker than what Sony and especially Nintendo bring to the table. However, this E3, we saw evidence of Microsoft trying to change that, with a whole range of exclusive first party games, covering a very diverse range of genres and game types.
But what we saw may be only the top of the iceberg here- speaking to Geoff Keighley, Xbox’s Head of First Party Publishing Shannon Loftis hinted that there may be many more games in development for Xbox and Windows 10 than what Microsoft showed off at their show.
‘I head first party game publishing for Xbox One or Windows 10 or any of our platforms,’ she began, introducing herself. ‘We right now have, i think, 14 games in development. We talked about four of those this morning – Killer Instinct, Scalebound, State of Decay 2, and ReCore. We also have Crackdown 3, which we announced has now been moved into 2017, and there are a few other ones that aren’t quite ready to be talked about yet.’
Her quote is interesting in its specifics- she does discuss four games that Microsoft discussed at E3 that they are publishing, but the exact number was far more than that- Halo Wars 2, Sea of Thieves, Gears of War 4, Crackdown 3, Scalebound, Dead Rising 4, Forza Horizon 3, ReCore, State of Decay 2, and Killer Instinct were all discussed at Microsoft’s showing. That makes for ten total games that we do know about, leaving four that we don’t.
However, even without getting into the specifics of the numbers she mentions, Loftis indisputably says that there are more Xbox games in development, unannounced ones, that aren’t quite ready to be talked about yet. In a sense, that does of course follow- it’s not like these games are all Microsoft have in the works for Xbox at this point, right? But it’s still reassuring to hear that their commitment to gaming and Xbox has not wavered.
I wonder what the unannounced games are- Halo 6 and Forza Motorsport 7, definitely, but there has to be more, right? Hopefully, we learn more about what Microsoft have planned over the next few months.