The Xbox Series X|S generation has had a lot of exciting moments, but there's also been a lot of delays and a lot of waiting for releases. So, when will Microsoft actually start getting more games out the door on a regular basis?
Speaking on the Kinda Funny Games Xcast, Microsoft's head of gaming Phil Spencer admitted he understood fans were tired of hearing the same old responses about big games coming soon, but insists the situation really is beginning to improve - mentioning how he can "only look forward".
Here's exactly what he had to say on the show:
"I can say now and everybody can already stop [with] 'I don't want to hear what Phil has to say about the future' and I fully respect that point of view, [but] we've got Starfield coming, we've got Forza coming, we've got Hellblade coming, like we've got collections of games, I'm seeing very good builds of Avowed... I can see it, but until you have a controller in your hand and you're smiling from playing our games, none of my words should matter."
He also touched on how up until Redfall, Xbox had gotten off to a respectable start in 2023 with releases like the surprise hit Hi-Fi RUSH, Age of Empires 2 for console and more recently released Minecraft Legends.
So there you go, we're apparently on the cusp of greatness with Xbox, we've just got to get to Starfield, the new Forza Motorsport, and then see what's next. Noticeably, Phil also mentioned there are "collections" on the way. We wonder what that could hint at...
Of course, the next big occasion for Xbox is the upcoming games showcase, taking place on 11th June, 2023. Microsoft and Phil are already teasing "new surprises" and even some "first-looks" from the company's large roster of studios.
Do you think the situation really will improve towards the tail end of 2023? Leave your thoughts below.
[source youtu.be]
Comments 59
Mentioning that collections of games are incoming is rather promising. A lot of the exciting Xbox stuff this generation has been about making older games even better and bringing old games to Xbox for the first time. Hopefully that rumour about Marcus Fenix Collection turns out real.
Gears collection!!! Please!
Do find it interesting to hear him say we've got Hellblade coming, but Avowed only has good builds.
Would've thought Avowed was further ahead.
In fairness 2023 has been good for Xbox up until Redfall. Hi Fi Rush is genuinely one of my fav games in years, Age of Empires 2 on console is a dream come true, as was the revival of GoldenEye (saving my ageing N64 its annual pilgrimage from the cellar). Ghostwire Tokyo's Spider Update School Level is also the most freaked out I've been in a game since Alien Isolation.
With Age of Empires 4, Forza and Starfield it's a great year all round even if Redfall is a blip (I wasn't overly impressed with Minecraft Legends either admittedly).
Onwards and upwards!
Ps, Dear Phil, if you know a game isn't amazing, don't charge £70 for it just because Sony charged £70 for Last of Us once again.
what i want is Microsoft hiring to create a division that can audit closely those studios and keep the communication to support them and get things done correctly! also they badly need a supporting studio that go left and right to help and speed up progress
“Collections” has my attention. I’m wondering what they can be? Xbox just needs to start delivering. We were excited when they showed a bunch of games (CGI) trailers in 2020 to announce some of the games coming. I know we went through COVID and there were delays. We’ve been patient, but now we need to start swing Xbox show up. Not half baked games. Not a bunch of CGI. Games that are ready for release. I’m looking forward to see what they have for us in June’s showcase.
I am looking forward to FM. I think that will definitely release in a good state, starfield I do hope it release in a decent state.
Hellblade coming is reassuring !
Fallout 3 and New Vegas remastered collection please Phil 🙏🙏🙏🙏
I’ve heard that all before. After so long words are just empty and they need to come through with actions.
At this point Phil Spencer is the same as South Park's George RR Martin. "Don't worry! The games are coming!"
"Good builds of Avowed" but "Hellblade is coming". So maybe a release date for Hellblade 2 soon but Avowed sounds like it still has a while to go.
Couldn't agree more, @Grumblevolcano. A collection of the original trilogy, and Gear 6, and I'll be a happy man...
Coming up. Still to come. Stay with us. Any day now. Just a little longer. Soon. Just wait.
Saying Hellblade is coming means nothing. That's like saying Gears 6 is coming, because, eventually it is. Just like GTA 6 and the next Halo game. Also, the next Xbox is coming soon. I can go all day with this.
@Microbius Me too! It is the one I am looking forward.
All great news, how about a look at Perfect Dark an Fable maybe squeeze in a 45 seconds game play trailer for Indiana Jones 😀, would love some of that.
@Romans12
Saying Hellblade is coming means nothing. That's like saying Gears 6 is coming, because, eventually it is
Also, the next Xbox is coming soon. I can go all day with this
Yes, yes you could but who would actually bat an eyelid. See, therein is the difference between you saying something and when Phil Spencer actually does 😁...
I wasn't really looking forward to Redfall but I find it pretty decent ...buggy obviously but don't think it's as bad as some have made out
@Sol4ris Me saying something would probably have far more credence than Phil at this point. So, yes, yes, there is a difference between me saying something and when Phil actually does. And don't bother to respond to this, I won't read it. Go away and go do something productive.
Fable collection please! 🙏🏻
Give me State of Decay 3 already. Atleast a glimps of gameplay or what it will actually involve. Will it be like the first more story based or the second that was more open world. Just tell me.
@Sebatrox Gears 1-3 remastered is my dream.
Hopefully this is not a violation of the spamming rule, but reposting here something I posted in another article on the current track-record of X|S delivery so far:
2020
2021
2022
2023
They have been delivering quite a bit, the problem is that most of these are not "big" games. On this list, only Redfall can be seen as a terrible launch. Their biggest mistake was marketing it so much, when it was obvious the game was not going to launch in a good state.
I agree with the comments above that Redfall should had launched as early-access, similar to Grounded.
@pip_muzz TLOU Part 1 physical copy was £50 an worth every penny. Greatest game ever imo.
@Sebatrox There's 2 main things to consider in which a Gears collection makes a lot of sense:
1. When you can find multiplayer matches with other players in the 360 versions, they're crawling with cheaters (like with most 360 games in general)
2. PC is a major part of Xbox nowadays and the only 360 Gears game on PC currently is Gears 1 so it's similar to how things were for the MCC PC situation
I can at the very least respect his ownership and accountability with current state of Xbox.
But now Phil must make could on it though.
Indiana Jones, maybe another Wolfenstein from Machine Games, and Contraband from Avalanche studios are also highly anticipated for me.
Ok but is hellblade third person it better be
@Fenbops you beat me to it buddy, i was so hopeful we would see a Gears of War 1-3 collection with high end graphics at 4K 60. That would be a day one for me and i would be playing it for years. Side rant: please get rid of the insane achievement and the lazy kill 500,000 players in multiplayer. I played over 400 hours of Gears 5 multiplayer and have a pretty good K/D and still only had 270K of kills. I dislike the over the top achievements. Rant over please please please announce a Gears of War collection at the June event.
@Grumblevolcano I’ll add a 3rd and thats the Gears of War show they are working on. A collection makes sense to bring in new players to the franchise and hope to watch the show. Sony does this all the time they update older games when the show is dropping and it shows great sales results. Gears of War needs this and so do loyal fans of the Xbox and Gears franchise 😀
@Sol4ris All Phil does is give PR speak. He’s been promising games for years now. Feel bad anyone still takes him at his word. I’ve defended Xbox to PS friends doe the last couple years but I’ve got nothing left to defend.
@Romans12
"And don't bother to respond to this, I won't read it". Go away and go do something productive
The irony 🤣. Try some self awareness mate, see how that works for you 👍.
I know we've been brutal (deservedly) on xbox for a few days, but to be be fair, if Forza, Stanfield, and the third game I suspect they're launching this year (I'm guessing Hellblade 2), come out and are in good shape, we really can't complain TOO much about the year.
@Sifi in my opinion and 25 million others.
Yadda yadda yadda 🥱🥱🥱🥱 ZZZZzzzzz
@FatalBubbles
All Phil does is give PR speak. He’s been promising games for years now
I see your point, but what else can he say? Games (good ones) require time to make and that time is greatly exacerbated by the fact they virtually made no investments or just neglected their first party studios until late into last gen. Looks like they remedied some of that by acquisitions but the time requirements are still there.
He could of course just say:
@Sol4ris Nothing you said is wrong, I’m just tired of hearing him say it with no pay off. Just frustrating, I dunno.
Good deal. Looking forward to it.
Tangent, but the truth is that without Phill's direction, there would be no Xbox, and it's almost as certain that should he leave at this point, Xbox will collapse.
Because of this, every time you see the slights negative news come out of Xbox, those that want Xbox to fail come out screaming for Phill's head on a pike. They want Phill gone, because they want Xbox gone.
@Tharsman The part I find funny is the people most screwed if Xbox vanished would be PS customers. Yet the ponies keep insisting that Microsoft is some monopoly threat to gaming and must be thwarted, while the head of the company is pretty much quoting Xbox Done memes.
@Tharsman Uh no I don't want xbox itself gone, I want phil gone because he is a terrible leader for the brand that doesn't give any confidence to the community whatsoever (especially compared to the god peter moore) He was a great guy to come in initially, but now I'm ready for new leadership
I'd take don over that clown phil (and at least he had the decency to give us a solid launch lineup with xbox one)
He may be a *****, but jim ryan has done more for playstation (in less time!) compared to what phil has done for xbox
@NEStalgia few things in gaming are sadder than a fanboy that wants all competition to just die.
Infinite_odyssey
And this is the kind of statement that proves people asking for Phil to go are entirely clueless.
@Tharsman Yeah don (as I stated) at least gave us a solid launch lineup with xbox one unlike phil with series, and he accurately predicted gaming is it is currently regarding aspects like always online, cloud, data stored server side, and people using consoles as a all in media device etc
Now I don't mean to sound like a fan of him, he did do damage to the brand and was worse compared to peter moore, but I'd still take him over phil. Phil has barely turned things around and he even states that xbox are still in 3rd place. I want a new leader
Maybe you don't know this, but it was Phill that was in charge of software back then, it was his job to come up with that lineup, not Don.
Don was the guy that insisted on TV, Physical DRM, always online (no clue how you think was an accurate prediction, I don't even need always online to play Game Pass or Steam games), mandatory Kinect, etc.
It was also Dons vision to simply rely on third party and not further invest on internal development because according to analytics most players spent most of their time playing third party games.
There is nothing Don did for cloud, all Xbox related cloud efforts came to be with Game Pass, again, something that came to be under Phill Spencer. Using consoles to launch Netflix was hardly an innovation, especially in an era that all TVs have Netflix built in.
@Tharsman Lol and what lineup of big exclusives have we got under phil's leadership into the series gen?
And (as I said) don did do some damage to the brand, I ultimately just desire to see phil gone with new leadership and don't see why you don't.
Dude has been at xbox as the head for a while (barely turning things around and noting that they are in 3rd place) and also even said that he doesn't mind if he's fired and says he's overpaid, its clear that phil isn't gonna get xbox to where it needs to be
@Infinite_odyssey what @tharsman is saying is that the launch lineup of x1 you're referencing was brought to you by Phil, not Don. Phil was the head of software working on that while Don was closing studios left and right. Phil has no games now because Don closed all his studios after those launch games released. He's been building the studios through acquisitions but at the speed of modern games dev they were never going to be ready for years still. We're still digging out from Dons damage. That's what Phil is referencing about losing last gen and the market share impact to this gen.
Don didn't just lose customers, he actively cut down nearly there entire game production capability almost completely. He basically liquidated Xbox in an everything must go sale
@Cherip-the-Ripper it makes me think Hellblade is going to feature prominently at the showcase and could be another release for 2023
@NEStalgia @tharsman @Infinite_odyssey My 2 cents. I don't think any of that is quite right. It's never down to one person. It wasn't Phil Spencer, head of games, during Don Mattricks era that did this alone it was the whole leadership pyramid Don, Phil and whoever were below them.
Perhaps Phil needs someone above him to give him more direction for games, to be more forceful and more hands on with studios, OR perhaps Matt Booty, now in that head of games role, isn't up to the task. Point is we really don't know, but we know something is amiss.
Regardless being at the head of that pyramid I think Phil is taking one for the team here. From my understanding on Redfall in particular Bethesda is pretty self sufficient and so if anyone should be in the firing line for that it should Bethesda and Arkane's leadership.
But I get it, this isn't just about Redfall, that is just the straw that broke the camels back. For me I would likely change Matt Booty to another role and give that job to someone more results driven, before I would get rid of Spencer. Perhaps try and poach Yumi Yang from Sony Santa Monica, as they just missed out on Angie Smets (previously Guerilla) who has taken a similar role at PlayStation Studios.
Personally i'm mostly steering clear of this one as it seems to have turned into a toxic dogpile and I don't have the time of energy for that.
@pip_muzz no system sellers though that’s the problem.
To be fair, if Starfield is good (it probably will be), Forza comes out late this summer, and the third game is released (Hellblade 2 seems the most likely there), this will have been a very successful year. Redfall is a mess, but i think people might be going a little overboard. Now, if Starfield is trash....
@themightyant Of course it's never one person, but I think between the X1 launch games with Phil in charge at the time, and the work Phil has done with the brand in the time since, and what we know Don was doing at the time (in his own words he didn't believe in first party exclusives and wanted a strategy around 3rd party timed deals and actively closed nearly every single studio and let Bungie walk out the door), I'm pretty sure we can say it was Phil, not Don who had that influence on the brief spark of life at the start of X1 before Don literally disposed of all of it. Yes, people UNDER phil were also responsible for making it happen, but it was most definitely not the guy ABOVE Phil who was clearly at war with his entire software program (and won.)
The delay of everything in gaming due to the long software cycles complicates these conversations because I think everyone is always looking at the events of the now, or a snapshot in time and looking for cause and effect, when it's always from the past that causes the effect. Matrick's early success was set up by Moore's era launching 360 until the steaming pile he was creating was far too advanced to stop by the time the signs of the problem were visible, leading to the E3 meltdown. Phil's current mess is a result of the lag time of basically building a brand new gaming platform starting around 2018 from the ashes of Don's bonfire. Bethesda's current mess is the result of Bethesda's downward spiral from 2010 onward finally catching up to them publicly again after 76.
I think people are a little harsh on Spencer, and yeah, I jump on the memes about him too, and now even he himself seems to be....but the reality (not the optics) is....what does he actually have to work with? His job was never going to be an easy one. Anything he actually does is going to have a 3-6 year MINIMUM lag time between the time it gets results with current game dev. And most of the big moves like Bethesda have most of their output still tied up in pre-ownership deals for years into the new activity, so it's a 5-8 year lag time. Again, not optics, or what people want, or what people expect, but in defense of Phil, if he got up there and 2018 and said "We're making moves now so that by the end of the next 10 years we have a good chance of getting back into competing position from the completely insolvent wreckage we currently are" that would not have worked well. Stringing things along with as many bones thrown to customers as they can while quietly rebuilding for the future behind the scenes is all they really ever could have done.
Did they drop the ball too hard to many times in that process? No question. Did ABK derail much of what they'd successfully done? IMO yes. But I also think too many enthusiasts on the internet were expecting "Ok, phil's in, launching a new console, that's it, Playstation's going down!" and that was never even remotely realistic. I think they could and should have been in a better position than they're in, but I don't think their comparative position was ever going to be equal footing in terms of market share. Not with an entire missing generation and a half. But we also have to remember internet enthusiasts are such a tiny part of the market none of what most of us think actually matters in real sales. Their increase in software sales YoY Q3 says much.
But I also wholly agree about Bethesda and Redfall. And it's another disconnect between internet enthusiasts and reality. Bethesda was half-dead, circling the drain and even at their best known for broken games. MS has truly owned them for less than 2 years. Most of what they were releasing to now was PS timed exclusives and Redfall was already well into development. And they're still largely operating as a separate publisher, wholly owned, not an integrated first party yet. The optics are very bad, the messaging should have been better, but.... reality is not the way people are painting/expecting it on this one.
I also agree with you on Matt Booty. Phil's the public face, Phil takes the fall for everything and the priase for everything. I do think Phil is very good for Xbox overall despite the missteps. Booty.....I'm not convinced they guy does much good and keeping him and Greenberg around are Phils biggest missteps I think. I have not really seen any example of Booty being someone that's setting a solid plan or having a solid batting average. The results are anemic, the plan seems scattershot and inconsistent, and any time he's interviewed or giving a presentation he seems like an empty shirt spouting empty conference room babble.
Though, TBF I'm not convinced that Hulst, his PS counterpart is doing much better for PS's part, I think we're still riding the wave of his predecessors largely, and we're going to see 2024 and beyond what his version of PS looks like. Lag time and all
that.
I'm not sure Poaching Sony people would be really effective or realistic for them. And I think that could misguide them into just trying to do tit for tat "alternate Sony" comparisons rather than help them go a different direction and carve a unique path. I'm not sure who they need. I mean Nintendo poached their NoA people from P&G, so apparently toothpaste salesmen brought us Toothepaste-chan. Maybe MS just needs the people from Monster Energy or something so they can sue Sony for having monsters in Spiderman that can be confused with the beverage. I do think they need someone else running software, though. But IDK who/what they actually need that person to be, which is probably why they haven't done it yet, they don't know either.
@NEStalgia Completely agree about the lag time. It was one of my main arguments against the ABK deal, that we hadn't even let the dust settle on the Zenimax one (Hi-Fi Rush was the first exclusive, Redfall is the second) and Xbox wanted an even bigger deal. It's one of the reasons I think they wanted it done so quickly. Reality is it will take 2-5+ years for the scales to balance from these decisions. Longer for some, shorter for others. There are some things they can do that have a quicker impact.
That still doesn't explain why they are incapable of getting games out on time, how they didn't get a first party AAA release for around 8 months after Xbox Series X release when the competition is able to. Something isn't right in their process.
Also agree Don was shutting studios down and didn't believe in first party (a decision they are still recovering from) but between them all they managed to get games out for XBO release regardless. Most of those exclusives like Ryse, Dead Rising 3 were third party I think one of Phil's problems is he is too nice / not cutthroat enough, and doesn't seem to want to play the paid for exclusive game, at least for AAA's (there are PLENTY of paid for Xbox exclusives) and this is what Sony and Nintendo do to fill in the gaps in their schedules.
Anyway the timer on my food is going off. I'm off to eat, finish The Last Case of Benedict Fox and then try and clear up any loose threads in my life before Zelda TOTK next week
Have a good weekend pal. Happy gaming!
Something that has never made sense with Zenimax before and after the acquisition is they seem to have a hands-off approach no matter how off the rails one of their companies is going. I would love the next Elder Scrolls, for example, to get help from ID. That way the humans look great, are animated appropriately and the game runs at a solid 60/120 fps.
If these companies like Arkane struggle, why not ask any of the other 30+ Microsoft development studios for help?
@ZuneTattooGuy They did. But apparently too late. It was Arkane Austin's first time making a full game with UE4, they'd previously used Cryengine and id Tech 4 and assisted using the in house VOID engine. Phil said they got The Coalition and some other in house engineers more familiar with UE4 to assist but they left it too late in the process. Likely it only became apparent late in the process that they needed help. Games come together late and are often a buggy, unoptimised mess months before launch.
@pip_muzz
What's this?!? An actual level headed response? We dont do those here in the gaming community buddy. If you're not outraged you arent doing it right
I like buying collectons of game such as Capcom's lot, so Xbox releasing a collection has me interested
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