The games weren’t in full development for 7 years. South of Midnight and Hellblade 2 were four year games. Obviously, people forget that Compulsion released We Happy Few in 2018 and had 3 expansions in 2019. 2020 was Covid so eliminate that year for basically everyone and what you have is just over four years. Less than two years from official reveal announcement to release. Ninja Theory released Bleeding Edge in 2020 which was also a wasted year in regards to Hellblade 2 since they couldn’t do any motion capture. The game was more like four years if that. Only reason why it seemed so long was because it was officially revealed and announced at TGA 2019.
As for State of Decay 3, the reveal announcement trailer in July 2020 was basically to just let people know that yes, the studios Microsoft now own are working on games. July 2020 showcase is known for this. We only saw gameplay two years ago and it’s currently scheduled for next year. Of course, people forget that Undead Labs were also pumping out content on a consistent basis for State of Decay 2.
Games average 5 years of development. It’s not the 360/PS3 generation anymore and even last generation, games took around 5 years to get done.
Hellblade 2 was a step back in gameplay and combat (at least to me anyway) but Senua looks way better in this regard and the turnaround would be less than 3 years which is basically unheard of nowadays. South of Midnight was a great game with the weakest aspect being a poor man’s Kena combat system. But everything else was great. It was also Compulsion’s best game thus far and the real takeaway from it is that Compulsion became way better than what they were with Contrast and We Happy Few. You can see the potential and the ability to become even better.
Studios like Rockstar sucked back then when they were know DMA Design. Naughty Dog was mediocre. Insomniac wasn’t much better. All the studios that are seen as the best nowadays didn’t start that way at all and took years if not decades to get to where they’re at today.
It’s not about being great early on, it isn’t. It’s about if the ability, talent and potential is there inside the studio to where they will become great.
If it was based on every studio’s first game or first few games, there would be no fucking games because they would all be dead and buried.
As for State of Decay 3, it looks great and a massive step up from SOD 2 and it’s supposed to be a seamless MMO type experience and yeah, they take time.
Games in general take a long ass time which honestly, doesn’t bother me at all because there’s so many publishers, studios and games that there’s always something to play.
Fable I understand why is taking so long, considering that Playground has never made a game like this on an engine designed for racing games and probably with a team smaller than most big RPG teams, at least at first.
If they actually go the Activision route and focus more studios on less games, I’m thinking it might actually be better overall. I’d rather get 3 games a year that are 90+ and hit hard in terms of sales, than 5-6 75 games that I finish in 4 hours and that people don’t even hear about and that have no impact in terms of sales. Third parties and indies push out enough content for MS to pay for and include in Gamepass to make up for a few lost first party releases, and they could instead focus more on licensing out the stuff they don’t use often in their “factories” to get us extra games.
At this point I think it’s worth focusing instead of diversifying, as it clearly hasn’t been working out and due to the current gaming climate, MS doesn’t have over a decade to let some studios grow like they could easily do in the 90s and early 2000s when a game would take a year to develop with a team of 40.
The Activision route sucks because it’s just COD every year. And all they do is reuse assets and still need thousands of people working on the game.
There’s no guarantee that you even get 3 games a year and they hit 90+. Only Forza Horizon 5/6 and Flight Simulator 2020/2021 hit a 90+. I think people need to start lowering their expectations in regards to believing that critics are going to start scoring Microsoft’s games high. Mid to high 80’s is as high as they will go outside of Forza.
My completed Microsoft published games this generation -
Gears Tactics - 8.0/10 (great visuals, audio, story/characters, turn based combat is good but mandatory side quests and not being able to free roam outside of combat hurt the gameplay overall for me)
Halo Infinite - 9.5/10 (my 2021 goty, excellent game with by far the best combat and gameplay in the series)
Hi Fi Rush - 8.5/10 (great game, hoping a sequel is being developed)
Redfall - 6.0/10 (my lowest ranked game of the generation, enough said)
Starfield - 9.5/10 (my current gotg, excellent game)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III - 8.0/10 (campaign only, it’s not as bad a people believe and I don’t play multi-player or warzone so the open areas didn’t bother me at all)
Hellblade 2 - 7.0/10 (good game but the combat/gameplay went backwards and im tired of the voices aspect)
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - 8.5/10 (great freaking campaign)
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - 8.5/10 (nailed the look and feel of Indy, great visuals, audio, story and characters…wasn’t into the immersive sim type gameplay and combat)
Avowed - 9.0/10 (don’t remember which off the top of my head, either way, great game and I think it was around 80+ hours for me, loved Avowed, of the best first person melee combat games that I have ever played)
South of Midnight - 8.0/10 (great game in terms of visuals, art style, audio and story/characters, combat was a poor man’s Kena but you can see the elevation of Compulsion compared to We Happy Few and Contrast as this 77 rated game blows away both of their previous games…took me around 15 hours or so if I remember correctly)
Doom: The Dark Ages - 9.0/10 (excellent freaking game, loved it…way better than 2016 for me and I dropped Eternal after a few hours…played through chapter 5 just looking to beat the story and it all clicked for me so I started over on a custom difficulty and completed the game 100% on all levels)
Ninja Gaiden 4 - 8.0/10 (im not a fan of the series or anything and while I enjoyed it, I did kinda zoom through the game… there were a few chapters that dragged for me but the combat and gameplay is really good…happy to see Platinum Games get back to doing what they do best)
Backlogged -
The Outer Worlds 2 (played through the prologue and couldn’t get a good balance difficulty wise, hoping it’s more balanced when I eventually get back to it)
Towerborne (played over 50 hours in Game Preview but need to play through the finished full 1.0 version…it’s at the very least an 8.0/10 for me based on the Game Preview…probably my third best beat em up of all time behind Final Fight CD and Streets of Rage.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (this is 50/50…I may play through the campaign later this year while waiting for MW 4 to go on Game Pass in 2027 but since it’s co-op focused and there’s no difficulty levels (I play COD on easy), I will most likely just skip it completely…haven’t decided yet)
Upcoming -
Halo: Campaign Evolved (im very much looking forward to this remake…looks great and seems to play way better)
Gears of War: E-Day (looks amazing)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (will wait until it goes on Game Pass because im not rewarding Microsoft with a $70 purchase after they screwed me over by removing it from GPU day one)
Fable (should be a goty contender for me in 2027…hyped for it!!)
Clockwork Revolution (I believe this game will be amazing)
I get why you and others may only want the “BIG” games but man, in my mind, that’s so fucking boring and dull because you already know what you’re getting as opposed to being surprised. Avowed made me an Obsidian fan, Midnight made me a Compulsion fan, got into Halo because of Infinite, became a huge fan of BGS because of Starfield, was already a Tango guy but Hi Fi won me over to where im hoping for a sequel, Fable should win me over as I don’t care about Forza, InXile should win me over with Clockwork, became a huge fan of Id after The Dark Ages, super happy to see Platinum back after Ninja Gaiden 4, absolutely loved Towerborne and was disappointed that it’s basically done and other smaller games like State of Decay 3 looks to get me back after dropping SOD 2 after 15 hours but I loved and completed the 2013 Arcade original.
Also, I don’t believe that the big games are going to do what Microsoft and others believe that they will do. I don’t care about the hardcore ponies who are bitching right now, they’re going nowhere and will be on PS6 next gen. If the games are exclusive, as the 5th ranked platform, they’re not going to sell much because with next gen consoles being $1000+, people will just default to PlayStation.
Microsoft should have gone in a value oriented direction instead of believing that they can become #1 by 2030 or get 1 billion daily players. Sorry but Asha is delusional in both of these regards.
The worse part is that im going to get less games but yet have to pay more to play them and after a while, im sorry, I want to see 343 and The Coalition do a new IP. Why do they have to be Halo/Gears factories? Especially when the IP’s are nowhere near what they once were.
I disagree with the “not working”. It’s bullshit. Funny how the Xbox division was at 3% profit margin EXCLUDING Game Pass and ABK. Gee, I wonder why they excluded those two aspects. Maybe it’s because if they included them, they wouldn’t be able to use the excuses that they’ve been using since Asha replaced Phil.
The only reason why all of this is happening is because Nadella is a fucking moron who’s obsessed with AI, hired Asha who’s heavily favored towards AI regardless of what anyone says or thinks including her and they need to get back the hundreds of billions of dollars that he wasted on chasing AI.
Why take a pay cut or sacrifice bonuses/salary when you can FUCK over everyone else instead? Including those like me who switched to Xbox because of Game Pass and because of all the different studios they acquired and this was BEFORE they acquired Bethesda.
Acquiring ABK is what is going to slowly kill off Xbox and eliminating day one games or barely having any games to begin with (Xbox One anyone???) isn’t going to lead to gaining new consumers and keeping those like me on your platform. In fact, it’s going to do the opposite because why the fuck would anyone stay on Xbox if everything you’re here for is GONE?
If they’re not on Game Pass it’s usually cheaper to get a Steam key from Loaded and on PC you don’t need to pay for multiplayer / online coop.
Game Pass (including buying the premium upgrades), Microsoft Rewards, Play Anywhere and the fact I personally like the Xbox store over the Steam one (and recently that I’ve been able to get Xbox vouchers as perks at work) are my primary reasons for staying in the Xbox ecosystem, alongside nostalgia.
If those reasons start to go, then people may reevaluate - just like those who demand exclusives reevaluated when they got that news.
I admit though with potentially less GP content (as most of the let go studios aren’t required to release on it), less first party output and potentially very expensive consoles I’m not seeing Xbox’s growth plan that apparently the new leadership thinks will hit 1 billion gamers…
Also Xbox don’t have the luxury right now to make some risky games, they need to focus on safe profitable IPs, risky projects can come later when they are healthy again.
Widey nails it. No day one games on GPU, no premium upgrade options, no free cloud saves, etc. Game wise itself, I don’t want just the BIG IP’s which will be one a year and COD. No thanks. If I wanted that, I would have went to PlayStation 5 instead of Xbox Series X.
Everything that got me into Xbox since 2020 is slowly but surely being taken away and when everything I like is gone, what’s even the point with staying on Xbox?
As of right now, they haven’t been but at the same time, I wasn’t expecting COD to get removed from day one on Game Pass Ultimate which tells me that anything can be removed/eliminated at any time.
I hope Microsoft doesn’t eliminate all the good stuff they do have but I wouldn’t be shocked or surprised if they do.
I hope so because I would prefer to stay on Xbox come next generation but if they end up removing day one first party published games from Game Pass Ultimate, it will push me more towards PC because if I have to spend $1000+ on their next generation console and have to buy all their games, im better off going to PC and Steam.
You cant remove day one games from Ultimate. It is the singular feature that makes Ultimate…Ultimate.
If it came to that point, it would simply make more sense to dissolve the ultimate tier entirely, roll back to a single plan that just has a selection of library titles, and call it a day.
There is no other game in the xbox stable that even comes close to the numbers CoD does on a yearly basis. They included it, it didnt drive subs like they hoped it would, and they ate the financial shit sandwich. Then they backtracked.
The concern is that by their own reporting Microsoft in fact didn’t eat a financial shit sandwich. Gaming revenue was higher than ever following including COD in Game Pass with their biggest peak yet being reported in 2025 for what should’ve been reflective of the 2024 numbers. What analysts reported then was that COD gamers didn’t convert to GP and largely bought it on the platforms they bought on. It just didn’t grow Game Pass.
It’s unclear what the full story is, but Microsoft did tell shareholders that GP revenue hit an all time high in 2025 and that’s Black Ops 6 was like the best performing COD ever or at least in a very long while with crazy good numbers. The shit sandwich came from Black Ops 7 being the “every other year” lame duck for COD.
I don’t think the issue is that GP hurt COD, but that COD didn’t help GP. In which case we do have a problem and that’d also explain why Xbox is parting ways with studios and said they have more content then they can sustain. If Game Pass has actually plateau’d (which is what the articles and analysts are now blaming for why the studios have to be cut (because the point wasn’t for a game like Avowed or South of Midnight or Kiln to sell a lot, but for it to support GP)) while Microsoft is focused on increasing ROI, then there’s a big problem. How can they increase profit margins as costs increase? If they keep the Game Pass business model then it’ll always eat into first party sales for all games. So they can only increase profits by finding new subscribers or raising the price. They tried raising the price and had to backtrack and supposedly they can’t find enough new subscribers. So what else is there to please Microsoft’s need growth? They can release on more platforms but gamers were vehemently against that.
I feel like Xbox will adopt a model like “New games on Ultimate 3 months after launch; new games on premium 1 year after launch.” I’m not sure what else there is. Push up the price more after having to lower it?