The next generation of Xbox has already seen the release of many stunning and expansive games, but the trade-off, as noted by many fans, seems to be longer development times.
Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty recently addressed this during a chat with Axios - explaining how the industry and fans are "a little behind the curve". The big budget games Microsoft mainly publishes no longer take "two or three years" but more "four and five and six years", according to Booty.
Matt further explained how this longer creation process is simply because of the sheer complexity of modern games and the requirements to reach higher technical marks when it comes to graphics and performance.
He went on to mention how the extra time to make big budget releases wasn't exclusive to the pandemic, and unfortunately, it's something that he thinks is here to stay. Keep in mind, Booty is specifically referring to AAA titles here and believes smaller teams may still be able to put out certain indie experiences quicker.
These comments follow news earlier this week about Xbox's plans to ideally deliver at least four exclusives per-year. Of course, this requires a lot of work years in advance, and it doesn't always go to plan, with many publishers making tough decisions to delay projects that require more development time.
Xbox Boss Phil Spencer also recently mentioned during this week's Giant Bomb sit-down interview how every one of Xbox's QA staff is apparently playing Starfield - looking at bug counts and the overall quality of the experience. It's not only taken over half a decade to develop, but it's also a massive collaborative effort.
A number of other large-scale releases this year like Blizzard's Diablo 4 and Nintendo's new Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom game have also gone through incredibly lengthy development cycles.