Xbox Wants To Release A New First-Party Game Every Quarter

Time is running out on the current quarter, does strongly suggest Flight Sim and/or Psychonauts 2 is launching in June.

But isn't Flight Simulator third party exclusive? As Asobo isn't Microsoft owned.

“With more than 23 studios worldwide creating games for Xbox, our goal is to release at least one new, first party game into Game Pass every quarter.“
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2021/06/10/whats-next-for-gaming-highlights/

Pretty much called it a while ago since this is the whole reason for why they're acquiring so many studios. In order to reach this goal of releasing a first-party title every quarter, they're going to need plenty of studios. It only makes sense for them to keep acquiring more now.

23 studios, 4 games a year. So pretty much a 6 year rotation (in theory). Am I the only person underwhelmed by that? I appreciate massive blockbuster AAA games can take years but not all these studios are focused on one game at a time.

@Chaudy the game is literally called “Microsoft Flight Simulator.” Do you consider Smash Bros isn’t a Nintendo first party game just because it happens to be contracted to Namco?

@AJM59 at least. They didn’t say only 1 game per quarter.

@AJM59 Keep in mind that they said "at least one" and there's also the fact that they've already confirmed that they're planning on acquiring more studios. So the number could rise to 25-30 studios and let's say they release one game every other month. Six first-party games each year based on 30 studios on a five year rotation seems pretty good then.

A lot of Microsoft first party titles don't interest me the most, but they have enough that I do care about to at least make this great news compared to how things were in the One era.

@Tharsman do you know the meaning of first party? It means its developed by a studio that's owned e.g. internal developers. Just because it's got the name Microsoft in it doesn't mean its a first party game. The IP is owned by Microsoft, it wasn't developed by Microsoft.

Anybody else peep the “with more than 23 studios worldwide” as more acquisitions may have been already finalized since we only know if 23.

@Chaudy Microsoft just like Sony/ Nintendo considers any game they fund and publish a first party venture. Just look when they show all the studios in any banner it has a slot for global publishing.
As with the logic sense they didn't own them Forza horizon until 4 both state of decays and hell even Ori are not first party titles .

@Chaudy so, you DO consider Super Smash Bros Ultimate to be a third party game.

@LtSarge yeah I never take the loose numbers as facts, I just didn’t see the quote as inspirational. Every other month (6 a year) as you said seems a decent number and no doubt the original timelines have moved on a lot of games too, hence a quiet spell followed hopefully by a few more coming soon.

@Tharsman yeah I know they said ‘at least’ it was just that as a target it seemed quite conservative to me. The full context my be that they were trying to reassure there wouldn’t be more droughts of no releases.

@AJM59 the way I read it, that seems to be their message: no more droughts. Although some might still consider there to be droughts when the games are or no interest to them.

I’m sure the traditional action gamer won’t even consider sports or sim games (horizon/flight sim) to count at all for them.

Others will see games like Psychonauts 2 (that are also going to be on PS4) to “not count” either, but I think that’s why they didn’t use the word “exclusive” yet.

@Gr81 I didn’t notice that at first but that’s a great point! We could be reading into it too much but most people seem to agree an announcement of an acquisition is coming soon. I’m excited to see who it is. If it’s Asobo that would be cool considering what they’ve built with flight sim. I’d be curious to see if it’s an out of the box acquisition though. Someone we wouldn’t expect.

@Tharsman I don't know, I haven't looked into that

@Chaudy no need to look into that. It’s the same situation: Nintendo owned, Nintendo contracted, Nintendo financed, Nintendo punished, but developed by Bandai Namco and Sora Ltd.

In fact, Nintendo, renown for its first party efforts, actually contracts out a ton of their games to third party studios. They don’t even own Gamefreak, the developer of Pokemon!

End of the day: a first party game simply means it belongs to the platform holder. IP, code, revenue, all of it is properly of the platform holder even if the game was third-party developed.

There will be no case where someone can buy out the MS Flight Sim IP out MS control, and the publisher can’t ever stop MS from selling it as they see fit.

@Tharsman okay thanks for that. It makes more sense now.

@themightyant I think this announcement is a hint that we will see big game announcements for the next 3 or 4 quarters.

MS Q4-21 ends June 30, so likely covered by Flight Sim for Xbox.

MS Q1-22 ends September 30, so I expect a big game release by then being announced at E3. Maybe just Psychonauts 2, but maybe also Forza Horizon 5.

MS Q2-22 ends Dec 31 and obviously will mean Halo.

MS Q3-22 ends March 31, maybe we get lucky and get Starfield by then.

@themightyant yea, it’s actually usual for Bethesda’s games to be shown for the first time just months before launch. Think Fallout 4 was about 6 months before launch.

Sounds great to me. As long as they are AAA quality games, because four a year of say gears of war, Forza Horizon quality will be a tough job.
If it happens it will stop me moaning about lack of AAA in house games for sure.
I would settle for 3 big AAA a year from in house of gears of war quality. Then the rest made up of the third party titles like far cry 6 etc.

@Chaudy Technically, yeah, but if everyone's going to always count Calamity Warriors (a Koei game using Nintendo IP) and Pokemon Snap (a Bandai game using Nintendo IP) and Mario Golf (a Camelot game using Nintendo IP) as Nintendo first party exclusives, then certainly Flight Sim (an Asobo game using Microsoft IP) counts for MS.

"With more than 23 studios worldwide creating games for Xbox..." 😏