Random: Forget Phil's Shelf, Xbox Boss Drops Hint In New Profile Picture

I'm hoping for some gameplay trailers and release date trailers. Not more announcement trailers.

I expect a great show. We got a great show last year with the surprise drop of FH5, so I'm sure there'll be some surprises there. It may not be a great first party year, but people act like Sony's having an amazing year, when their only big games so far are their delayed 2021 games, and the only thing we know about is God of War 2 which (maybe?) will be a Holiday release. Nintendo's the only one with a strong showing, but they've been almost absent for 2 years, so it's kinda time for them.

Hoping for a great show with actual gameplay and release dates

@NEStalgia Nintendo absent for 2 years? They literally haven’t stopped releasing games since the Switch’s launch, I even hope that Microsoft gets to the same kind of schedule where every month or two there’s something new to play.

@IOI The dismal barebones animal crossing game that became a Second Life replacement followed by Paper Mario was their last major release until Kirby. They were pretty absent. The biggest thing last year was MH, but that's Capcom.

Of course now they have Kirby, Splatoon 3, XC3, and who knows what else coming all in rapid succession. They do have big pacing problems at times (2019 was a similar blowout.)

The showcase... maybe we'll get a pre-announcement of a teaser for an announcement for a cinematic trailer of a game to be released in 2025 (which will then get delayed)... and maybe some Forza Motorsport 😆

@uptownsoul Deathloop? When in 2021 did that land on Xbox?

But, yeah, I never said Xbox's 1st party 2021 was good either. FH5 and the Flight Sim port were the big ones. Halo Infinite...should have been good, but....it's basically as though it was delayed to 2022 anyway (still waiting for the rest of it.)

FH5 is fantastic, though, and Psychonauts 2 is GOTY material. Since it's multiplat, not sure Psychonauts 2 "counts" though.

As for Deathloop, I'm sure that'll be very well received on GP, but....sadly, Arkane never gets the recognition it deserves. I still have to get back to that game, I started it but was pretty overwhelmed at points. There's so much you can do with it though. It'll be exciting when it hits GP so more than 5 people have actually played it....

@NEStalgia Keep hearing this “Sony have only had a good year so far because horizon zero dawn and GT7 were delayed from last year”…like it means PlayStation has no AAA exclusives last year. Would have had none this year. It’s a bad narrative that neglects Sonys forward thinking when it comes to ensuring they’re consistent in having something released each and every year. And also ignores their 3rd party exclusivity deals. For example, PS5 would have still had 2 more Bethesda games than Xbox. I can’t remember a time when PlayStation players were ever left hungry at the first party/exclusive table.

I don’t know if Phil is trolling us, or hasn’t actually read the room. There’s a conspiracy now going around that starfields actually good to go but they pushed it back because they don’t actually want sales going up too much this year as it could hurt the Activision deal. Personally I think that’s reaching and ignoring generations of Xbox inability when it comes to delivering games on release dates. But it makes for an interesting theory…and plays on the picture of Phil with Bethesda, everyone all smiles but for Todd Howard, days before.

I wonder just how big a hit delaying Starfield will have been. I don’t think it will have affected subscription sales as those that we’re waiting for starfield will simply keep waiting. Those that invested in a year because of starfield MS already have their money. And will get it again next year. But if the rumours of releasing a firestick type dongle this year to stream gamepass to tvs was true then I imagine starfield being delayed will definitely hurt as no doubt it would have been a huge part of the marketing.

They’ll no doubt still be a lot of starfield around June. I’m just still hoping they have gameplay from the majority of their studios to show…and hoping that the release dates on them isn’t 2024 onwards. I think there’s no getting around that the delays have deflated many, and xbox has taken a hit to its perceived momentum. So I think there’s even more pressure now to have a good show in June. I just have no desire to have cg trailers thrown at me. I’m too old to get hyped from hints of games that may or may not come out in the next 5 years.

@Bleachedsmiles When I look at the exclusives, though, from that time, you get Returnal (which was technically 3rd party, they didn't buy them until after launch), the two Bethesda games (third party), and....what? Kena's great, it's an exclusive indie, and I happen to rate it as one of the top of the year, but it's still not what we're really talking about. A game being paid to not be anywhere else, fake exclusivity (or forced exclusivity) isn't quite the big E3 blockbuster mic-drop moment we think of when we talk "platform exclusives."

Microsoft, absolutely had a thin year, FH5 was great, Flight sim port was a port, but pretty dang impressive on a console. Halo.....is what it is.... Psychonauts 2.

Sony had 2 games from Microsoft, Returnal from what was formerly 3rd party, R&C was big, GT7 and HFW are big, they definitely had a bigger year last year overall, but the two were at least somewhat parallel. But if not for the delays to this year, and those two released when they were intended, 2022 would still have a whole lot of nothing for either company.

Sony usually does pace things better than others, having a full calendar used for releases. Nintendo has pacing issues. 2019 was overcrowded, then very little for years, and now 2022 looks overcrowded again. I think MS will have that same problem. Little for years, and then they're going to start crowding their own releases all at once when they finally get going. With GP it matters less for them, though, as boosting sub value permanently is the same whether it's all at once or spread out, so maybe they won't mind, but it still "feels" poorly paced.

@Bleachedsmiles Having played Todd's games since Daggerfall, if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that when Todd says the game is ready, what he really means is it's buildable, and Bob from QA saw it on a screen, so it must be ok.

Any conspiracy that involves a Todd game being secretly in a releasable state ahead of release involves a little too much happy juice.

Considering Bethesda still hadn't shown anything in the game, I don't think there were many that felt confident it was releasing in a few months at all. I'd be half surprised if it were 2023 and in a better state than Halo.

@NEStalgia For last year, or within its first year…PS5 got, like you say, Returnal, Deathloop, ratchet and clank…add demon souls and Spider-Man miles morales to that too. Pretty sure there was also some directors cut…which I guess we can add those if we’re looking at adding the possible rumour of a gears collection?

We can’t go on ‘what if’s’ though. I mean what if halo had released in 2020 alongside the Xbox series as planned? Then for a year and 6 months MS would have only offered us FH5 from their studios as exclusive support for a new console. And PS5 would have still gotten a Bethesda game this year…

@NEStalgia I don’t go with the conspiracy. But not seeing gameplay wasnt a red flag tbh as they did the same with fallout 4, and I think 76 and Skyrim…revealed gameplay only about 6 months ahead of time.

Side note, I’m currently playing through fallout 4 on series X…it’s riddled with bugs, a pretty broken camera during conversations, had 1 crash, and doing something as simple as changing weapons is so sluggish and delayed it’s frustrating. It’s also AI partner heavy…and the Ai is pretty poor. I started it on the ps4 when it first released and don’t remember it being in this state. I honestly can’t see them releasing starfield as a polished bug free experience. Which they’ve now surely added more pressure on themselves to do.
I wonder, now that it’s going to be on gamepass, now that people have had to wait longer, if the Bethesda bugs will still be seen as charming or if, in a more social media heavy world, people will be less forgiving and really tear starfield apart.

@Bleachedsmiles I wasn't counting the 2020 games. I know they had games and MS didn't in 2020, but I was trying to keep the parity of what 2021 was, and what 2022 was. IDK about directors cuts. I'd like to think we're not down to counting re-releases with an fps patch as "new games" from any company except Nintendo, because we just expect that from them....

Bethesda: Were you there on launch day for FO4, 76, and Skyrim? I was. Being the same was a red flag to me. 76's launch day was so traumatizing I never touched me $60-preordered game again after the first hour. Literally. It's still in my library...I never launched it after that night. The patches can't undo the horror in my mind.

I really do believe Starfield was "Todd-ready" for 2022. Which meant 76-like. Which meant instead of a few thousand hardcore preorder fans being traumatized by the launch state, it would be millions of GP subscribers all at once, and MS put the hammer on that fast.

I do think it will be torn apart, but looking at how Skyrim took nerdy TES and made it a mass phenomenon on socials when it launched, I still think it'll get a lot of free passes if it allows a lot of freedom. For better or worse.

@uptownsoul Ahh, I see. Yeah, as a publisher then, if we're including their PS titles, and PC-only titles, I can see that. They had AOE3 (PC), Deathloop (PS), Flight sim (XB), Psychonauts 2 (all), FH5 (XB), and Halo...err....I guess that counts. Oh and the Pirates of the Carribbean SoT expansion I always forget about because I don't "get" SoT, but it's a big Disney pack so that's still big (I tried it on GP and it still felt like confusing and aimless SoT to me....I was hoping for more story.)

All except Halo were good to great, and Halo is popular for reasons I can't fathom in its current state.

Sony had R&C, Returnal, and......I think that's it? (With Deathloop under MS's list, not Sony's as a publisher.) Not sure if Kena counts since that's not theirs. Returnal kinda counts but it was 3rd party at release. And Nintendo had....Dread and that was about it. (And Warioware? And probably yet another Musou reskin I forgot about.)

Haha, but Deathloop sold terribly! Wait, NPD...is that the one that tracks physical-only? That might partly explain it...but even still, the numbers were dire, how dire was the rest of the industry doing for that to remain on the chart?!

@NEStalgia Not because some years aren’t a blowout means that they’ve been “absent”…

Animal Crossing, Paper Mario, Mario 3D All-Stars, Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity, Clubhouse Games, Xenoblade 1 Remastered, Pikmin 3, Mario Kart Live, Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury, New Pokemon Snap, Monster Hunter Rise, Pokemon Pearl & Diamond, Mario Golf, WarioWare, Mario Party Superstars, No More Heroes 3, Zelda Skyward Sword HD, METROID DREAD, etc…

Are you seriously still going to say Nintendo has been “absent” for 2 years when they’ve released more games than Sony and Microsoft combined?

Sure, some are remasters, collections, or third-party exclusives but they are FAR from being “absent”, I even wish Xbox could’ve had this amount of games released the last couple of years even if not everything is a big AAA…

@Bleachedsmiles "I wonder, now that it’s going to be on gamepass, now that people have had to wait longer, if the Bethesda bugs will still be seen as charming or if, in a more social media heavy world, people will be less forgiving and really tear starfield apart"

That depends if the games is good. People seem to not care about bugs as long as the actual game is good.

@Floki There’s a whole toxic community out there that’s ready to jump on any gif showing up starfield…that’s now has any toxicity echoed due to it having been delayed. Starfield is going to have to be very good. The landscapes/mindset so different now than it was when Skyrim first released

@IOI @NEStalgia heh we really don’t want to get into an argument on which platforms had the most exclusive support in the last two years…Xbox ends up on the wrong side of that one every time

@IOI Oh, no, we're not counting re-releases as new games, uh-uh, no way!

I did forget about XC1 remastered, that's a genuine remaster. (And I did include Dread.) But the theme with a lot of the non-reissue content from Nintendo is that it was all obvious filler content. Small, cheap games at full price that aren't really the reason anyone buys a Switch. Nintendo DOES have the worthwhile content, but not during that timespan I mentioned. I'm all about the AA games more than the AAA games these days, but, some of that struggled to be single-A. It was like the WiiU years, except with the promise of good content in the future.

@Bleachedsmiles LOL, yeah, Xbox definitely has had the short end of the exclusives stick for a while, but that's not a big secret.

@Bleachedsmiles You say that like there isn't a toxic community for every game known to mankind. So that means very little, if anything.

You keep bringing up Skyrim, like we haven't had Fallout 4 that wasn't ripped to shreds.

It would have launch in very much Cyber Punk levels of bad to be rip too shred by the levelheaded gaming community.

@Floki Skyrim and fallout 4 weren’t console exclusive.

@NEStalgia So releasing almost 20 games the last couple of years are “like the Wii U years” where there was 1 or 2 games in the whole year? What are you talking about?

You realize that even if you don’t find a game interesting some other people do?

Yes, some of those games are re-releases from the Wii U who nobody owned (except me and 4 other people lol), the point is they’ve been nowhere near “absent” as you said, and even if we count re-releases out it would still be more games than Sony and Microsoft has released in the same time, seriously, how is that being “absent”?
I hope Xbox would’ve been just as “absent” then lol.

@uptownsoul Right. That was my original point I haven't compared Deathloop sales to Xbox games sales. And there haven't been a lot of them to compare to. FH5 did well in sales, and the most popular part of Halo is the F2P so it doesn't really apply. Psychonauts?

@IOI again, counting re-releases really isn't useful for comparison. If we're counting re-releases as games, then Sony and MS have to count nearly the entire PS4/X1 library, and Xbox can count a chunk of the X360 library as well as "new releases." It's BC-sold-per-title basically.

As for filler-type games, board game collections and such, I suppose that's countable, and comes out ahead of MS at least. But if Microsoft released "Ultimate Mahjong" for Xbox, would the fanboys really start trolling on Push as a result?

I want a huge in depth Scorn showcase. I want to know what Brian Fargo had been working on (he's getting old so i doubt he has many more games in him) and I want a surprise.

Well it's comforting that Phil changed his profile pic into Starfield, that suggests that he's still got faith in this game, we'll see.

FYI- it's "bated" breath not "baited"...

@NEStalgia Your irrational defense and suggestions its simialr to Sony are pretty laughable.

This isn't about other corps or what the PS5 has - though I can tell you it has a LOT more going on than Xbox (read this site, hardly anything happening, compare with Push, full of stories), its about Xbox mismanaging their schedules and leaving fans disappointed again, which none of us wants.
I genuinely hope the games show has some surprises because it seems like the same old story this year - hot air and promises with nothing delivered. Yes I do have other options, but I also really want Microsoft to start delivering some games for my series X as much as anyone. They have some of the best dev teams in the world, I don't want them wasted producing poorly managed sub standard content we wont see for years.

Though we may view the market very differently - ultimately we want the same thing, a strong showing from MS to show the faithful we have some great years ahead. Fingers crossed for the show.

I am sure there will be big suprises in strore but one thing that seems to have skipped by is this year is the 10th Anniversary of Forza Horizon and we are due whatever 2 DLC packs Playground are working on.

Rather than add-ons for Mexico (which is already pretty exhaustive) could we get a fully remastered version of the Colorado map from FH1 as an extension of the festival from FH5 with additional features like being able to go off-road?

@Titntin I'm not "defending" anything. Just pointing out the odd hypocrisies. Sony had more in 2021, but it's not like MS was empty handed in 2021 with Psychonauts, Flight Sim, and FH5. (I'll ignore Halo....it's a wreck.) 2022 looks barren, but we also don't know what they'll surprise drop like FH5 was last year. I'm just assuming Motorsport because it's crazy they don't even have one for sale, and it's been a while. Maybe something else, maybe not.

I can say regarding new first party content I spent about equal time on both systems in 2021 (and didn't play Halo more than a few hours because I'm still waiting for coop) and least time on Nintendo with only Dread being an appealing exclusive to me (and I was somewhat disappointed by it.) Obviously XB is my default 3rd party system so it gets the lions share of play time outside exclusives regardless, and 2022 looks to be overwhelmingly a 3rd party year (Hogwarts etc.)

It's not about defending MS, when they've screwed up they've screwed up, but, I also think there's some odd expectations. Mostly , I think it was insane for them to say 2022 for Starfield given the turnaround time for Bethesda titles. But it was also insane for Sony to say 2021 for GoW, HFW, GT7, and R&C. They're both in the habit of setting impossible targets for marketing reasons (lies?) and then missing them.

The main difference is in Sony's case they had more in the pipeline coming into the generation, so they looked more prepared for it while MS, we knew beforehand they were starting from zero, with all newly purchased studios with existing release commitments, so we knew there would be a wait, so the delays hit harder when the wait seems in reach.

Though I also have the sense that Sony front-loaded the gen. They don't have a ton of studios and nearly all of them have recently released and may not have anything to release for years, so in a year or two we may have the opposite situation where MS is overcrowding their own release calendar and Sony's seems empty. And we know their studios are going to be pushing on GaaS for their next titles. Either that or Sony leans harder on buying timed exclusivity, which would suck.

@NEStalgia
Psychonaughts was multi plat so there's no reason you mentioned it at all apart from to pad out your list? I absolutely agree on Halo - its rare I complete a game in 12 hours and still feel robbed, but that's how I felt, FH5 was the only decenet release last ear in my eyes and it was still poorly optimized on series x - if you played @60hz, the pop in was pretty bad. I rarely use my 3090pc, but I played FH5 on it because I could run 4k ultra with 60 hz and not have the horrid pop in. ..and flight sim is a PC port that no one would buy a console for. Its a graphics showcase, but its hardly a game - not to mention the MTX.
So last year was pretty weak and so far this year there's nothing, but I believe they will reveal some stuff in the show - surely!
Sony has over 25 studios producing titles. I dont bleive they have front loaded anything. The fact they don't announce it whilst still in concept phase for most of them is to their credit, but you must know there's a lot of stuff on its way and this summer we will see it all announced.

"But it was also insane for Sony to say 2021 for GoW, HFW, GT7, and R&C"
Except R&C was delivered and was fantastic, and they have now delivered HFW and GT7 with v short dleay, which are also both fantastic. I would lay money on seeing GOW this year too. Your comparison doesn't help the optics on MS delivery at all!

We will never see the opposite situation, despite your speculation. Sony have planned their releases, and its pretty rare to go through a dry patch of good releases on their systems, so there's no reason at all other than wishful thinking to suggest their output will dry up - far from it, its clear to me their release schedule will ramp up.
MS have indeed bought a lot of devs, but they are devs who have been slow to release in the past and MS do not have a track record of managing these resources effectively yet - I hope it changes.

Appreciate we both see things differently, but I respect the way you communicate and we both do want MS to bring the goods, so we just 'chewing the fat' here. I dont think it helps MS case to underplay Sony's key strength and that's bringing good solid 1st party titles out regularly. They've always done it before, they are doing it now, and I have no doubt they will for the future.
MS have done so much right, if they can catch up to Sony on that front, then we will all be happy!

In the meantime there are tons of 3rd parties and indies to help ease the wait

@Titntin I have Psychonauts bias, so I'm likely to mention it too often It was just such a fantastic game!

I don't even know where to slot first party multiplat releases. Neither of us mentioned MLB for Sony. You called out Psychonauts. CoD and Destiny will just confuse everything, lol. Plus Microsofts games that are Sony timed exclusives....

FH5, I didn't even notice the pop-in at 60hz on XSX because I tried it on XSS (my XSX broke the first week of FH5) and the pop-in was meme-worthy, so all seemed good on XSX! But yeah, I think at one point I compared it to the 30fps mode and it wasn't so hot. But I couldn't stand 30fps mode for it.

I assume both Sony and MS have some surprises to show, though IDK if Sony will do it in summer or not. But I still believe there's an automatic bias that Sony is viewed in one light due to past history and MS is viewed in another, with current circumstances ignored. It's the same thing that happens in judged sports. An athelete known for "always nailing it" will be given a pass, even when you can see obvious faults on the replay - they missed. While an athelete known for struggling on certain things will be scrutinized with endless replays and every fault found, so the "usually good" athelete comes out on top, despite having a worse performance that day, because the bias in judging.

The same seems to happen when comparing release schedules between these companies based on past history without the circumstances factored in. Same with reviews, that bias comes out. Even when Sony games are flawed, the flaws get overlooked and glossed over because "Sony games are usually great."

Honestly, I think MS would have done better to delay Halo to 2023, too. If their games are delayed but solid at launch, that'll help them a lot better than continuously spitting out games that are incomplete to try to match Sony's release schedule they had a 7 year head-start on.

@uptownsoul it’s the best Playstation line up to date. Returnal, Demon’s Souls, Deathloop, Horizon, Ratchet, Miles Morales, Gran Turismo 7, Forspoken, Sifu, Ghostwire Tokyo. Plus PS5 versions of games like Ghost of Tsushima, Uncharted 4 an Lost Legacy, God of War, Days Gone, etc. i do think Xbox have dropped the ball like they did with Xbox One. They’re letting Playstation run away with it again.

@sjbsixpack Maybe it's pedantic, but it just drives me crazy when people are comparing new exclusive games and then people start including multiplats with timed launches, rereleases (Usually on the Nintendo front), and enhancement patches as new games.

Sony's list of new excluisive games since launch is: Demon's Souls, Deathloop, HFW, GT7, R&C, Miles, Kena (maybe?), Returnal.

MS's is Gears Tactics, Flight Sim, AOE3 (PC), FH5, Halo Infinite (sic), maybe something smaller I forgot about.

Sony still has the bigger list. No need to pad it with rereleases/upgrade patches and multiplats coming to Xb later (that are actually MS's games...) I didn't include MLB or Psychonauts 2 for either since those are multiplats.

@NEStalgia i wasn’t comparing. My point was there are plenty of new games to play on PS5. The timed games i mentioned are available to play now on PS, that’s my point. I also mentioned PS5 versions of PS4 games.

@NEStalgia for me Xbox need new exclusives. Halo an Gears are becoming a bit long in the tooth. Forza is a driving game so they can get away with that. I wish Xbox had games like a lot of PS exclusives. God of War, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone, etc. really hopin Starfield an Redfall live up to the hype.

@sjbsixpack that's an understatement 😂. I'm a single player gamer, but I don't necessarily want xb to try to duplicate the whole cinematic third person action adventure schtick Sony does (or did, assuming they don't replace that with gaas cash cows.) I'd rather they complement each other with different things. If Ms gets the wrpg momentum going soon, That's a good differentiation. I'm not sure what else they could revive to remain equally compelling yet entirely different but I'd like to see more of that. Aoe3 could do it. To date Xbox has had several rts games and ps has had none.

@NEStalgia opinions my friend. My absolute fav games are basically the type of games PS devs make like the ones i mentioned. Kind of a Netflix series in video game form. TLOU 1 and 2 are my no.1 games ever. The story, the gameplay, the realism, the twists an turns, the shocks and the acting is as good as any Netflix series. I think Xbox would do well if they made similar games, PS exclusives often sell 20+ million copies. Xbox put exclusives on Game Pass so they prob wouldn’t sell as many as PS but they’d still sell millions.

@NEStalgia Sony have 25 new IP’s in the works. The games will keep coming. I do agree MS will close ground in time but they won’t catch Sony because of the lead Sony are making now.

I think we should all be able to admit no company had a great 2022. Between covid and shortages it's likely tons of plans got massively messed up.

That being said we usually have tons of rumors out of MS by now but oddly this year... Nothing. That's odd.

So my theory is simple. 2022 is going to be a bigger year than expected. Starfield and that other one were delayed because it's Bethesda stuff so it's the law. That being said what If they were delayed to make room for other things? We have a holiday with no COD or Battlefield in what? 17 years?

That means other games, games that otherwise would have been ignored (like Titanfall 1 & 2) will have a chance.

Also... What if we get an exclusive a month from June on? A long shot I know but... It's possible and the ultimate goal for gamepass.

@sjbsixpack From a business perspective, I don't think "copy what works for the other guy" is a great strategy, especially when the goal is sharing the market and not trying to outdo the other in their own market to put them under.

From a gamer perspective I also would rather no two companies offer different flavors of the same product. The variety is that makes them all worthwhile. Unless we're going "no exclusives"and selling platform features instead of exclusive games. I like Sony's games so I buy PlayStations. I like Nintendo games so I buy Nintendos. I'd like Microsoft to offer different types of games to the other two to make that Xbox a must have rather than "other versions of Sony games"

..... Although, we'll see if Sony keeps making those or goes all in on the mtx season pass games... They've been pretty clear that they're not focused on pleasing existing customers, their focus is attracting new more profitable customers, and if the destiny crowd is more profitable than the horizon crowd, they'll drop us in a heartbeat like Nintendo dropped existing customers for the Wii waggle crowd years back.

@d0x3601 There's also the other end of the stick... The economy is in free fall. Recession is all but guaranteed. Could it lead to depression? 2008 should have and was bailed out with public money that no longer exists. Discretionary spend has dropped off a cliff, with Walmart and Target citing massive profit drops and consumer spebd shift mostly to groceries and essentials, downgrading to store brands there and not spending much on discretionary items. Target named a surplus of unsold tvs and furniture.

Who would want to send a video game out to die in that market?

@NEStalgia I can't say you're 100% wrong. I am very fortunate... I have a job that won't go away that I get paid pretty good for. I'm by no means rich but this week alone I spent about $300 on games and $400 on headphones. A few weeks ago I bought a fanatec setup and new racing cockpit. So eventually if people like myself keep spending then we will bounce back quicker.

Now before anyone throws around labels I'll come right out with it... I'm not a republican, I'm not right, I'm a classical liberal not a progressive. I also voted for Trump... The first republican vote of my life. He's a crass ahole for sure but I don't think we would be here if he was president still. Quite honestly I don't even know whose running the country because Biden is clearly not all there and Harris is a moron. Had the media (social and tv) not suppressed speech, made things up and spent 4 years making everyone think everyone is racist and dividing the people even more maybe it wouldn't matter who won.

Now why would MS keep dumping money into projects despite all signs showing a recession? Simply because they can. They have enough money to run the company for 10 years, possibly more and run it exactly as they have been.

People will cut back on game spending and spending in general. Except Microsoft has the best way for all to weather the storm. Gamepass. Plenty to play without spending $60 for everything. Plus with rewards you can have gamepass free forever within a month and a half, maybe 2. You earn enough points doing quests (playing) and bing quizzes to extend GP ULT for 3 months. Every $1 you spend on Microsoft or Xbox.com earns you points. I haven't paid for gold in over a decade and from 2020 through 2021 I extended my GP ULT through 2025.

So Microsoft has all the incentive in the world to invest in gaming because they make it easy for users to play new stuff, old stuff, tons of stuff. If people need to cut spending then it only makes sense to get gamepass. Honestly gp would have become huge regardless but it's quite possible a recession could help them even more.

@d0x3601 It's always nice to find the rare person that doesn't just align with left or right package deals and call it a values system...

I also am not particularly aligned with any particular political package and assume I'm the enemy of all of them because I'm not totally aligned with any of them. Though really the difference is hard to spot. Idiots on the right, fools on the left, and anyone rational wouldn't touch the mess for a billion dollars. If someone offered me to be president starting tomorrow I'd flip them off and grab a pizza. Who'd sign up for an impossible task of managing a broken, divided civilization backed into an unsolvable economic hole of being entirely financially dependent on a single hostile foreign state? The first sign you know they're not right in the head is that they run for the job in the first place. Everything after that is just expected. Where's Vault-Tec when you need them

I do think the pending recession will really give Game Pass (and Plus Extra) a massive boost, as retail sales flag a bit. Video games have proven to be recession-proof in the past, but that was different. Most of the market was hardcore dedicated hobbyists. It's now grown to the mass market. And the mass market will slow down in purchases. Now with high value sub services, it'll time nicely with the spending decline. Gaming engagement will probably increase, but sales will be down. How that affects the industry....IDK.

@NEStalgia it would be a great time for companies not making huge sales to start testing new ideas with small games. Says $20 for a 4 hour experience or 10 for 2 hours. Then depending on feedback and sales they can make a full game.

It stinks that we most the middle market, the $30-40 game. Even though most were terrible they still made the companies money and it was usually enough to fund their bigger projects.