I do wonder exactly how much Covid messed up the launch window games. I know it’s been a problem in the industry but everyone in the industry wasn’t launching a console.
Nobody except Microsoft is being incredibly upfront about it mostly.
I mean, you see this “Sony hasn’t been impacted by COVID!!!” despite, you know, Returnal launching after launch, Ratchet and Clank moving out of launch window and Horizon moving to H2 2021, and GT7 moving to 2022.
yea but those still hit in 2021, aside from Halo (and maybe Forza Horizon) we’re still talking 2022 at the earliest for a consistent flow of stuff. We figured they were laying low towards the end of XB1 generation for the launch of XSX, and they’re still figuring it out basically.
They released around 10 games in 2020 if I remember correctly. So I’m not sure they were laying low exactly. They just chose to launch them when they were ready instead of holding some for the Series X/S launch. Their problem is they relied too much on Halo to carry their 1st party launch line up and that obviously didn’t work out.
Maybe people don’t play games as much they like to discuss them?
Probably more so that I’m just a weirdo that pays an unhealthy amount of attention to the game industry
I certainly don’t blame anyone for their disappointment surround the 1st party output on Series consoles so far.
Not as bad as other places. Some of us really would love to see a game of that caliber, visually and who knows in the future. We’ll undoubtedly get some amazing looking stuff.
There was also a big disappointment about Starfield. Some of us, me included believed way too fucking much in what insiders had been saying about Q1 2022 for Starfield, and the likes of Luke Stephens claiming the game was almost finished. Then came Jason Schreier and totally ruined that party, lol.
Lessons were learned, speaking for myself here.
This is the verifiably correct take of the current situation (read: not disingenuous fearmongering). As I and @KageMaru have said ad nauseam, Xbox studios released nearly a dozen games last year and that’s not including the Double Fine remaster collection releasing, DLC, etc.
I am not aware of anyone saying COVID impacted Microsoft and only Microsoft, and when you look at Sony’s release schedule it’s clear they very much were too but they had an advantage of hardware/software originally poised to release in 2019 and an iterative SDK suite compared to the complete rebuild and upgrade of Xbox’s GDK. I had a discussion with Mike the other day in fact where I think people will look on Xbox’s approach to their GDK, and the revelatory impact it has on PC/Xbox development and hardware utilization, as we are seeing with Smart Delivery, Xbox BC, and several other initiatives that were mocked or downplayed only to see why they were actually the better approach.
I mean personally even I absolutely love to see the grander scheme of things when it comes to the gaming industry. But maybe it’s just me I am just satisfied with whatever I am getting to play and having a big backlog makes things that much easier to wait for the games ![]()
Anyways I am that kind of person who doesn’t play games day and date. The only game I played day and date was SimCity.
And honestly HFW still isn’t even dated after being announced as a launch title. And GOW was dated 2021 and doesn’t look like there’s any chance of that happening. Even Kena moved way back.
Yeah, not to discuss Sony in this thread much but anyone ignoring all of the misleading announcements from Sony whilst condemning Xbox is, at the very least, not arguing in good-faith. FTR, I’m not saying Sony should have been able to release any of the games mentioned on time, as they were just as affected by COVID as everyone else, but they probably shouldn’t have misled the public again about these being first year titles for the express purpose of selling launch consoles (see their cross-gen stance).
On topic: after watching the Computex figures come out from AMD (which should be taken with some skepticism, despite AMD having a pretty good track record of accurate benchmarking), I’m extremely excited to see what extra performance The Coalition or iD can pump out of the Series consoles with AMD’s FSR. The extra hardware and software features are really going to enable some great things from XGS this gen ![]()
I honestly see it as “Microsoft takes the slings and arrows for Sony” AGAIN.
Microsoft says that there will be cross-gen titles and they get crucified.
Sony announced Sack-Boy, Miles Morales, and Horizon as Cross-Gen, and nobody cares because they were already tired about Microsoft.
Microsoft says “Hey COVID, hit us really hard so things are going to take a little longer” and Microsoft gets pelted with stones for having “no games”.
Sony gives vague dates that all the titles miss… “Hey, times are hard right now, things are worth waiting for”
I get everyone’s take here but it can’t be ignored that atleast all of these games that got pushed back has atleast shown some gameplay. Again I fully understand how the pandemic has effected this, I’m not overly concerned but it can’t be ignored that most of the studios can’t even show anything yet because they are so early in production.
100%.
One of my biggest regrets is having to sell my OG Xbox for books for university…
Yikes. That’s worse than selling it for beer money.

Countdown begins.
Going back to Avowed for a bit…
(and it can be posted here since it’s not E3 related)
Let’s for now assume it’s true that Avowed is on schedule, Obsidian is on top of their game. All around great news. What could this potentially mean for a release date, I wonder? Last year after E3 Sponger posted all kinds of details about Avowed, about how long it had been in development and what their target was. So anyone remember what year the target was again?
It’s hard to tell, but it almost sounds like 2023 sounds too far away for how far along this game seems to be. But if it isn’t 2022, I don’t think Q1 2023 is too crazy a thought. Right?