Oh jesus.
A first party game by Xbox Game Studios Publishing
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Holy hell I forgot about Wo Long….
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Who’s Studio Gobo?
A support studio in the UK.
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Been thinking a little more about it and my final thoughts on XGS and just the recent show.
Back in 2018 or was it 2019? When studio acquisitions started to get announced it was very exciting, finally a huge change for Xbox. I think it was during XO19 that Phil announced that Playground Games was working on a new open world RPG and officially announced as Fable in 2020. We’re in the middle of 2022 and it has been complete radio silence ever since.
State of Decay 3, announced in 2020…radio silence ever since. Avowed, announced in 2020, complete silence if we don’t count Jez’s article. From the studio itself it has been silence. I get that these games take time, but just a little communication, small bits of info on Twitter or in a Xbox.com blog, even a tweet saying all is going well would go a long way.
I recall FromSoft when Elden Ring wasn’t out yet letting the people know development was going well, just taking a little longer. Yesterday Ubisoft during Rabbids showcase said people had been waiting for more than a year to see the game, they realize the importance of it. Those things do help, for sure. For some reason Obsidian decided against showing Avowed, while initially having planned to show it, no problem, but a little bit of Communication on that to the fans would have been nice.
Who knows, maybe the future holds multiple Xbox streams a year and that’s where we get this kind of stuff. This all was my biggest disappointment from the show. They didn’t make us aware of the twelve month thing at all, so many of us definitely expected something on Avowed, Compulsion, maybe even something small on SoD 3 and Fable.
And if not from Obsidian, maybe Jez has some info, anything sometime this year. If I’m being unreasonable, that is not my intention and I personally don’t think I am.
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No, Obsidian never stated when they are gonna show the game. Insiders just assumed that the game is ready or whatever because they saw gameplay etc. Whether it was the last E3 or the current E3. Xbox does more communication than even Sony or Nintendo (whose games we don’t even know). It is just that Xbox does not have anything big released recently.
I think eventually it will be good. Microsoft just does not know how to read the room. They almost never new - maybe only in Peter Moore era.
Nah, I meant Obsidian last year after E3 in that blogpost. They said the Avowed team was working on something and to be shown soon. And then just nothing came from it. It really is no big deal, I am sure they have good reasons to not show what they wanted to, but a small update, tweet on it would have been nice.
At the end of the day I just want these games to be as amazing as possible and I can’t deny that not hearing a peep about it makes me slightly concerned I guess. And as much as I want to ignore negative rumors about dev problems and what not, I can never completely ignore it.
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They never stated “when” they are gonna show the game. They just stated “soon” (which of course I did not buy). People just assumed that it is gonna be TGA or whatever. People cling to Avowed because a lot of xbox folks assume that the game is close to release and considering that Xbox’s first party releases are relatively far away - people hope that Avowed will be shown.
We are in a very odd situation right now with Xbox. I personally just wait for some great graphical showcases and acquisitions.
In times like this where gaming development is less linear than ever due to the pandemic, it’s best just to wait for tangible proof rather than take studios at their word.
Development is too fluid for anything to be set in stone unless the game is like 5-6 months away from release lol.
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I think this time Xbox has become a victim of its leaker culture. Project Belfry, Avowed, Contraband - people assumed that those games will be shown on E3, but then Microsoft announced that E3 included only the next 12 months and that just automatically means that all these games - that we thought are close to be done are very very far away.
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I think Avowed was the only one people were confident in. I don’t think people held out expectations on seeing Belfry or Contraband, atleast not to the extent of Avowed.
I think this was more on Obsidian like Staffy said rather than leaker culture.
I think Jez (or Grubb) was confident that Project Belfy was close to release. Also Jez was confident in Contraband (while Grubb said that Avalanche was missing deadlines). With Avowed everybody just assumed that as last year it was ready to be shown, it will be certainly shown this year. People were dreaming about the situation of “so many games to be released at once” and debated whether Microsoft should spread the release dates and so on.
Contraband was a possibility, kinda could have seen that being at the show too. Belfry probably as well. But yeah, Avowed. I mean we had Jez hyping the game up in his tweets the days before the show. But clearly the guy was just excited and expected to see it as well, back then I thought he really knew something, lol.
I think this is why Xbox moved to the whole 12 month approach this last Not-E3 Showcase.
I very much suspect they will keep this format now, especially as both 2023 and 2024 look to be busy years and because ABK will likely be completed by then.
12 month approach is fine if there are other shows (after all every month moves 12 month). The problem is that still nothing guarantees that those games won’t be delayed for one reason or another. But even without that - that 12 month announcement was out of blue.
That would very likely mean still nothing on Fable next year.
And this is yet another reason why they need multiple streams. If they want E3 to be about games coming in the next twelve months (or I should say games PLANNED for the next twelve months because for sure some games at the show won’t make it.) then they can have seperate streams to reveal some further away stuff.
Do they need though? Current market condition does not require further game announcements. And let’s be honest - further game announcements are mostly needed for list wars. In an ideal world we would not even have leaks.
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