I would hotly contest that sentiment. Microsoft didnt have a great 2022, but they’ve more than had their share of hits this generation.
Halo Infinite may not have had the longevity that people wanted but that campaign was great and the multiplayer at launch was phenomenal. The multiplayer was so good that every outlet was begging them to keep the beta live until launch. Halo Infinite had 25 million players and was undoubtedly a hit.
Then Forza Horizon 5 was a massive hit, probably the best car/racing game ever made with 30 million players to date.
They’ve delivered smaller games that really punch above their weight and were critical and audience successes: Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush, Psychonauts 2
Over the last three years they also delivered successful and critically well receieved games: Gears Tactics, Age of Empires 4, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Wasteland 3, Minecraft Legends
They have done all of this while maintaining a huge current catalog of GAAS games.
I understand that maybe these arent evwryones style of games and that may be where some frusteration comes from, however, Microsoft has done a great job at putting out content that generates large player communities.
They also have by far the most games in development simultaneously of any platform holder and their conaistency in release dates has been steadily improving.
They may not be beating Nintendo or Playstation right now, but they sure are not doing a bad job. We’ll see what the future holds too because that converaation regarding PS and Xbox may change soon.
Well I have enjoyed my fair share of Microsoft games over the last few years but the current climate surrounding Xbox is self-inflicted. You highlighted that in your comment actually, games like Hi-Fi Rush are nice to have as something complementary but big AAA games are what drive the masses.
And those haven’t been all that great on Microsoft’s side.
I don’t think they need to mimic whatever Sony happen to be doing right now but what they need to do is to create ambitious games that demonstrate what the Xbox ecosystem is all about.
Going back to the initial point : no, there is no grand conspiracy against Microsoft. If they pumping out games like Halo Infinite on the regular the narrative would be completely different. Releases like Redfall really do not help…
I’m looking forward to Starfield & Forza this year mostly, at least on the Xbox side of things.
It’s not healthy to entertain some sort of conspiracy against Xbox for some reason. Sony have been really great with their games and that’s paying off.
Don’t worry if Starfield is as good as we want it to be those “Xbox is doomed” sort of articles will be but a distant memory.
Sony has great games but they also entertain a certain vision of what should be AAA gaming, post Uncharted 2. Before they were much more diverse. They have focused on one type of games and taught the public that this should be the only games worth of consideration.
I understand that the medias have embraced this type of games completely. These games are easy to play, do not require too much skills to finish, allow to make a review fast , allow to talk about cinematic considerations that the casual public understand.
On the opposite, many other games are more oriented multi player and require skills and time, which medias (and console warriors) do lack.
Great video from Sik, agree on everything he said. For a big part of the gaming media and for a good percentage of “enthusiasts”/“core” gamers Xbox can’t win no matter what…it’s always a mix of “not good enough”, dismissing games and features that don’t fit the narrative and double standards/moving the goalposts galore.
The bias against Xbox is real and anyone trying to say otherwise is either blind or arguing in bad faith. As Sik said apparently it feels good to hate on Xbox and the media are aware of it thus why there are so many uninformed and stupid articles about Xbox’s doom & gloom lately.
No. There is an obscene bias. Look at all this concern trolling about Starfield launching with bugs when you can youtube any number of glitches in Tears of The Kingdom.
Playstation. Fanboys. Move. Goalposts.
And this year they will have to move quite a few due to the PS5 game drought. Third party games will count again because Final Fantasy.
One of the latest ones is “Imagine if they never bought Bethesda”…yeah…imagine a world other than the one we actually live in if it makes you feel better…PS5 still has a game drought
I don’t much care because Microsoft will own Diablo 4 , CoD 2023 and Starfield this year with Forza and Age of Empires as a side dishes.
Thats much better than the current PS5 game drought.
I think whether its personal bias is up for debate. However, whether the coverage is biased is not. Theres an easy explination too. The algorithms (SEO and social media) reward negativity because negativity and outrage always drives more views than positivity. There are a ton of studies out there on it. There is a huge fanbase that loves to hate on Xbox, and those negative articles keep the media money rolling in.
For Starfield, the reviews may be good or bad. The true public of Bethesda games embark for a 200h journey with mods and extensions. The limited view of a media who spent 20h in the game has no impact on their vision of the game.
There is a bias against Xbox. There is also a bias (positive and negative) towards Bethesda games. They will launch bugged and at the end they will reward with hundreds of hour of gaming.
“Conspiracy” implies it’s some concerted effort behind the scenes. It’s very much out in the open for everyone to see, unless one doesn’t want to see it for whatever reason.
Barring the whole Redfall overreactions and fake “concern” over Starfield , we’ve seen the many in the gaming press showing their asses on social media concerning the ABK deal before that. Also I am so sick of people trying to dismiss certain games ( in this case Hi -Fi Rush) because they want to push a narrative.
It is a high quality game in every way shape and form and could have easily been 60 bucks and no one would have had an issue with it. It scored better and was better received than Square Enix’s AAA “big game” that dropped around the same time. To dismiss it is to be disingenuous and borders on a straight up bad faith argument.
Again I say if you need to dismiss or ignore a certain factor to make an argument valid, it’s not a valid argument.
We’ve seen all this play out with xbox over and over again in the press. From MS doing the exact same timed deal for Tomb Raider and everyone involved being harassed and hounded by the press till it was reveal how long the duration was, but not keeping that energy for FF7 remake or 16. To Ryan MCcaffery throwing shade at xbox and their fans about it while praising Sony for doing the same thing.
You have Sony with a complete drought by their ( gaming media’s) own definition. First party has Spiderman and DLC. That’s it.
Yet MS drops a game that was in the GOTY conversation for many (complimentary my ass!) a highly rated Strategy game and one dud, with Starfield , Forza and maybe Hellblade 2 on the way at the end of the year but you’d never know it. I wonder if the tables were turned and Hi Fi shadow dropped at a State of Play to all that acclaim and Sony had a few more big games coming this year but all Xbox had was Halo DLC and Redfall with just Forza dropping at the end of the year. Bet the energy would be very different.
In any case it can no longer be argued that there is no media bias because there is way to much evidence to the contrary.
THIS right here.
Ignoring reality; a staple for the Xbox hater.
I always call back to the zero sum game that Sony created. The more zealous of fanboys want Xbox to lose it all. Reality however, shows things differently.
The reality is there’s nothing Sony can do to oust MS out of the gaming industry. This is the one true wish the haters really want.
Without reading the article or watching the video (will watch later), I agree with the headline. It doesn’t matter what Microsoft does in regards to Xbox which is why I always say that Microsoft simply needs to say “fuck you” to gaming media and just do what they need to do for their own fan base.
The facts don’t agree with your perspective. Tomb Raider exclusivity occurred during 2013. Xbox was coming off a highly successful 360 console and had a better first party lineup compared to PlayStation 4 for a good 18 months.
Street Fighter 5 exclusivity came within that time. There was a clear double standard there and it had nothing to do with exclusives at each console offered.
As someone who’s keeping track of both Microsoft’s and Sony’s first party releases this generation, the current drought for Sony is at 2 months as they released MLB The Show in March. The current drought for Microsoft is at 0 months due to releasing Redfall this month. Sony has released 11 first party titles for a total gap of 20 months while Microsoft has released 12 first party titles for a total gap of 20 months. The longest gap for Microsoft this generation is 7 months (Gears Tactics to Flight Simulator) while the longest gap for Sony this generation is also 7 months (Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart to Horizon Forbidden West). The second longest is 6 months for both Sony and Microsoft.
Point being is that both Sony and Microsoft have had gaps this generation. The main difference is that Sony gets third party publisher deals to cover those gaps where as Microsoft rarely does this and even when they do, it usually doesn’t work out the way they envisioned it for whatever reason.
NOTE: I don’t include last gen releases, expansions/dlc or remasters/remakes as these are all games that were already released prior to this generation and for something like The Burning Shores, you still need the base game to access it which excludes it from being a new game releasing for the first time on their respective consoles (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series). I also don’t include third party games unless it’s funded and published by Sony or Microsoft which at that point, I see it as a first party release (for example, Destruction All Stars and As Dusk Falls).
