Microsoft has done an incredible job of pulling themselves back together- after spending five years with a slim catalog of exclusives and only a few first party studios and games, they have spent the last few years working on building up an enviable portfolio of Xbox exclusive games, via internal first party studios and partnerships with second party developers. It is starting to show and Microsoft plans on continuing with this in 2016, and beyond, with more new IPs, and more games other than the ones we know of, like Gears of War 4, Crackdown 3 and Quantum Break.
“Yeah, absolutely [you can expect more new games and IPs in 2016]!” Anshu Mor, head of Xbox operations in India, said to GamingBolt. “I think you know – I can safely tell you – Xbox fans can always look forward to more exclusives, more new IPs and you know bigger and bigger games. There is no doubt about it.”
That sounded nice and everything, but we wanted to be sure if we could expect more new IPs going forward, beyond just the reliance on the traditional Halo/Gears/Forza cycle. So we asked him, point blank, if Xbox is invested in creating and cultivating new IPs, to which he replied, in no uncertain terms, that they are “deeply invested, yeah.”
It’s nice to have the assurance of new franchises- especially since Microsoft has been known to cultivate and grow franchises into veritable phenomena. The best instance of this we have is Halo, which is still the Xbox’s signature franchise, and which gets its fifth installment later this month. We asked Mr. Mor whether the pressure was on on Halo 5 to deliver.
“Yeah, you know , the Halo franchise is a cult franchise for us, there’s no doubt about it, so a lot of the people are, you know, Halo fans… and all the big games that I could think of are launching. It’s like, you know, I don’t know, when we will get time to play them entirely? But again, this is very huge, Halo is very big, Forza is very big, then obviously, FIFA and all, which are third party games, are very big, right? So it’s like a gaming festival which is going to happen in the next two or three months right now. The success of Halo always is big for the category and I think it’s big for the industry as well. It’s one of the games which defines a generation, really.”
It’s easy to see that Microsoft feels comfortable right now, with them entering the approaching holiday season with an extremely strong lineup of exclusives, as well as all the big blockbuster multiplatform games as well. They have done their part well- now it remains to be seen how the market will respond to their efforts.