2021 was an excellent year for Microsoft as a publisher, thanks to new releases like Psychonauts 2, Age of Empires 4, Forza Horizon 5, and Halo Infinite, though looking ahead to 2022, things are looking a little drier, what with the vast majority of Xbox first party games currently in development – like Fable, Avowed, Perfect Dark, and others – looking unlikely to launch before 2023 at the earliest.
According to Xbox boss Phil Spencer, however, the aim for Xbox Game Studios as a whole is to have the kind of pipeline where they can routinely and consistently deliver a healthy stream of great games to players with regularity.
Speaking on a recent episode of the XboxEra podcast (transcribed by Pure Xbox), Spencer said, “We do have a lot of great games in development…We want to get to this point where there’s a steady flow of great games that are coming, that our customers can predict… we’re going through right now, you know, [and] we don’t have a big game this quarter – so Matt Booty and the teams, and the ZeniMax teams… want to get to that point where we really have a great on-ramp for our platform and games that people can get excited about on a regular basis.”
This, of course, has been Xbox’s stance for a while. Back about a year ago, the company explicitly stated that it wants to get to the point where it releases at least one major first party game every quarter of the year. Given the sheer number of first party teams under the Xbox Game Studios belt, and how many more will be added once the Activision Blizzard acquisition is finalized sometime in 2023, one would imagine Microsoft will eventually get to that point.
For now, we have Redfall and Starfield to look forward to in 2022, while you’d imagine Deathloop will also launch for Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass once its PlayStation timed-exclusivity period comes to an end later this year.
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