You said it perfectly well put these big AAA games that people are demanding take at the bare minimum 3 years obviously longer if your really ambitious in scope not to mention development being hell right now with covid in the mix
Happened to Halo. Halo 4> Halo 5> Halo Infinite.
i dont think they will reboot the IP with the next Gears. but there will be changes. The Coalition is rumored to be making a new IP. a āteam Bā trying new things. maybe still related to the Gears universe. weāll see
Halo 5 opened a whole new narrative arc, Gears 5 closed some loose ends from Gears 2 and showed there was going to be a final conclusion to the current arc in the next game. Halo needed to drop numbered titles after 5, Gears doesnāt at all.
humm idk. weāll see. i still dont think it will be called āGears 6ā but i am prepared to be wrong.
Hello everyone, Iām new here (Iāve already wrote the presentation post in the right topic).
About the timeline of the XGS releaseas, I think itās reasonable to think something like this (only the announced ones):
2022-ish (bar COVID and/or unexpected things):
_ Everwild: announced at X019, initially expected for the Xbox One even, I donāt really think it will release āwith a new consoleā (I know the meaning of the quote, but it was a really terrible take from a so-called respected journalist).
_ Hellblade 2: announced ad TGA 2019, in active development since the end of the first one, 5 years (4 of them with full budget from MS) itās a really long time for and action-adventure with no grand scale rpg elements.
_ Avowed: itās a known secret that this was the grand scale project which convinced MS to acquire Obsidian, so itās in active development since at least 2018 and we are talking about one of the most seasoned rpg developers in the industry, they know how to make these games, even in rapid timelines (KOTOR2 in less than 2 years, F:NW in 2 years, TOW in 2, 5 years and so on).
2023-ish:
_ Fable: grand scale rpg from a new developer in the genre with a new team from scratch. I also expect extensive photogrammetry, mocap and connected world, so itās a really ambitious plan and we know itās being developed in some form since end 2017, so 5-6 years itās a reasonable take.
_ State of Decay 3: SOD 1 (2013), SOD 2 (2018), so I think 5 years is the right spot for Undead Labs. This time they will have the entire development cycle as a first party, so no excuses for lack of polish and bugginess, which harm the reputation of an objectibly unique brand.
_ Perfect Dark: The Initiative was founded in 2018, but they are strategically located in Santa Monica, a hub of experienced developers and they will heavily rely on contract works to do the heavy lifting, 5 years imo is a reasonable teake.
Project Mara is an unknown quantity, so I wonāt do a prediction, about Forza Motorsport-Horizon I expect one of them this year, we havenāt had a Forza game since 2018 and itās already unprecedented in the entire history of Xbox (dating back from even PGR days, which was the Forza precedessor).
Yep, I think this is about right, after 2023 things should be smoother too, making development more straightforward and hopefully presencial.
Also.
All looks reasonable to me. I do think you might be early on State of Decay though. They stated at E3 laat year that they were in early pre-production, which to me means the game can be 2024.
I am under the impression that the team spent a fair amount of resources improving SoD2 post-launch so you might not be able to go by the launch date.
Thank you
I havenāt included all the unannounced first party games, all the Game Pass deals, indie deals, Global Publishing Deals, Bethesda, so I think we are āsafeā from fall 2021 onwards.
Alea Iacta Est (Julius Caesar)
I concur with you with the possible 2024-ish, SOD 3 must be very very polished to be considered a tentpole game from Xbox, but I donāt think that post-launch support impacts the active development of the new game, they are different teams I believe.
All I want for the games that are farther away like Fable, SoD3 and Perfect Dark 3 is⦠Take your time, they started development for these games more recently and need all the growth, time and support Xbox can give them.
These games will represent the mid-gen, this tells me that these games will be able to show the full capacity of the console or at very least most of it.
All these games will surely take advantage from VRS, XVA, DXR and maybe if itās ready, DirectML Super resolution.
Games like the Inxile RPG and SoD3 could even take advantage from mesh shaders, seeing that theyāre only just beginning development, but who knows if weāll see it in full action this gen.
They have great potential and I want them to take full advantage from the hardware and showcase some really unique experiences 3~5 years from now.
The holes in the first party line-up are, at the moment, japanese content (I wish the Kojima thing is real, Iām a reaaally old fan of Metal Gear since PS1) and colourful/young rated games a la Nintendo and even some PS games like Sackboy/Astrobot, etcā¦MS objectively stopped making this type of games since Super Lucky Tales I believe, Grounded is a survival games with insects, so I donāt think falls in the description, maybe Battletoads, but itās a really small scalle game, like Astrobot, but itās only one and if even the new blockbuster centric Sony can produce more, itās obvious you must improve.
PS: I donāt consider Ori a āyoung oriented gameā, itās a masterpiece, but its difficulty is not really targeted at a young demographic at all.
Agree, my fear is Sony perceiving the threat from Xbox and starts paying for timed and full exclusivity on any Japanese game.
We have rumours of SF6 being fully exclusive to PlayStation already, and that would really suck⦠If thatās the case Xbox should fund their own fighting game with Capcom, maybe a Capcom Fighting All-stars, hyper fighter and 3v3.
And obviously find someone who can make a new Killer Instinct, else Xbox will be completely left out of fighting games in the long run.
I generally donāt care much about niche japanese games, they self inflict themselves the doom and gloom āthese games donāt sell over thereā when they donāt even try, so, itās their loss, but when we talk about big publishers, their greed is the only one to blame. Capcom would be particularly shortsighted to forfeit the Xbox base for Street Fighter forever with another bullshit deal, expecially when they are not in need for money like in 2015-16, so it would be on them.
From another point of view, Sony must be wary of their exclusivity deals, I canāt see MS not responding nuclear even in Japan, their government would likely agree any acquisition instead the likes of Tencent (the regulations in Japan about acquisition are particularly targeted against Chinese investments), so I think the Zenimax deal must have raised some flags in the Sony Corp higher-ups: donāt start a war you cannot win poking the bear, fight with your weapons: brand, internal studios, growth with long standing relationships, etcā¦but the exclusive battle they have fought for 25 years plus is an already lost war against a combative MS, we have already witnessed it during the 360 days.
So with the recent talks, rumors, rumblings about big stuff coming from Xbox Games Publishing, do we expect that at this E3? And I believe it was Jez that said these were exclusives from those AAA third parties, like a Ryse, DR3, Ori (AA) and others. He was the one that had the comment about how XGP is getting into huge deals, he made a real big thing out of it. Some might come to fruition, some not. Hopefully we get the big stuff this summer, because Iām very curious.
According to Jez on the Xbox Two podcast, only 1 of these 4 large scale projects he knows about is possible on this E3, the other ones are too far away.
Hmmm. But that can still include Kojima, since he wasnāt aware of that at first.
Yeah, but Capcom is famous for out of nowhere dumb decisions⦠Weāll see.
Letās hope Xbox is going crazy with partnerships in Japan.
I think it making an appearance in 2 months is unlikely if the deal isnāt even finalized yet.
I assume these deals are signed early in the development stage, not towards the end. Its different buying an exclusive from a studio that can afford to fund their own game and one that would need a publishers money.
In the last podcast he reiterates that he doesnāt know anything about Kojima, so yes, potentially one game from the āJez listā plus the Kojima one.
If they want to decrease even more the appeal of Street Fighter in an already niche genre, they are welcome: ultimately it will be their loss, itās no secret that fighting games is a shrinking bubble, the only true AAA remained is Mortal Kombat. Almost no one in the grand scheme attach him/herself to a console and/or a brand/subscription for a these type of games. We are not in the 90ā anymore.
Also if this potential deal sparhead some initiative like Phil saying āfuck, now we are gunning for Capcomā, they are even more welcome (itās also a known rumour that before Monster Hunter World Capcom was on sale and Microsoft was trying to get it, so itās not an impossibility, Capcom in particular is the japanese publisher with less ties to anime/manga things which MS might not like from a license point of view).
Capcom would be truly insane to keep SF on PlayStation only.
Capcom fighting games used to be a force of nature, if you think about it, gamepass is way better than a PlayStation only deal, just give SF an instant playerbase of millions, everyone would just play it instantly, the game would never struggle.
I suspect that the success of Outriders will open some closed eyes in the eastern land lol. They will flock to the MS headquarters in Japan to enter the queue for Game Pass, we must realise that aside from a very short list of tentpole franchises, many mid to high scale japan projects are always on the verge of the abyss with the traditional business model which Sony guarantee them and we know for a fact that fighting games are not anymore tentpole type of games. After SEGA, and Square Enix West (empashis on west lol), Bandai Namco will be the next one (they put some of their games on GP, but not the big ones yet). Koei Tecmo barely supports Xbox, but their president has spoken up saying they āwill support Xbox if they are serious about Asiaā, so we will see, Capcom itās a 50/50, they support MS and GP, but they are willing to sideline it for the right check, Konami lol, what they are even doing anymore aside from PES and wishful thinking rumours, we miss only Square East and the Atlus conspiracy XD from the big japan publisher list.