Current Events > Will 2018 be another bad year for Xbox exclusives?

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.engadget.com/amp/2017/12/28/xboxs-lack-of-compelling-games-wont-be-fixed-next-year/

A 6-teraflop GPU and 12GB of RAM won't help Microsoft clear its other hurdle, though, at least not in the short term. Since last year, the company has shuttered a pair of its internal development studios (Fable house Lionhead and Max and the Curse of Brotherhood's Press Play) and killed off at least two other games: the incredibly promising dragon-owning-simulator Scalebound from PlatinumGames and the internally developed game-creation suite Project Spark.

The number of internal studios and software projects is so low that the company had to announce it would be going on a shopping spree for new studios and games next year. The problem is, on average, games take between two and three years to make, and big AAA tentpoles can easily spend double that time in development. Xbox's dearth of fresh games you can't play anywhere else isn't going to be fixed in 2018.

This fall, the Xbox's big exclusives were racing sim Forza Motorsport 7, which, while extremely pretty, was more of the same, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. The latter has 25 million players on PC, and Microsoft is bragging it racked up over 1 million players in its first 48 hours on Xbox One. The lovably clunky work in progress isn't the type of thing that's going to hit beyond Microsoft's shooter-centric base, however. At the moment it also isn't the type of game you boot up to show off your fancy new console and TV. The same goes for backwards compatibility with 15-year-old games from the original Xbox.

So how does Microsoft fill the gap between now and whenever its first new purchase comes out? Early 2018 has the cartoony shared-world pirate simulator Sea of Thieves and Crackdown 3, both of which are big maybes. Let me explain. Thieves is developer Rare's first stab at making a Destiny-like persistent online world. It'd be a feat for any team to make, but aside from the nostalgic Rare Replay collection from 2015, Rare hasn't had a critical hit in almost a decade.

Crackdown 3 has been delayed multiple times, and based on what I played of it at E3 this year, its being pushed into 2018 wasn't surprising at all. Will it actually be good when the ambiguous "spring" launch window rolls around? I wish I could say yes with any degree of certainty, but that isn't the case. State of Decay 2 is supposedly getting a big push from Microsoft, but zombie-survival games aren't the type of thing that cross over to mainstream success.

Microsoft's output this generation is so damn disappointing. What a step down from OG Xbox and 360.

I'm guessing it's Halo 6 and Forza Horizon 4 for the latter half of 2018. Not sure what else they could come out with.
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I just want Horizon 4
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Looks like MS is being more tactical with exclusives imo.

They cant compete with Sonys Japanese games and AAA single player exclusives so theyre doubling down on their big franchises (Halo, Forza, Gears) while getting more multiplayer exclusives (sea of thieves, pubg, etc).

I think that is Sonys weak point since they dont have any huge multiplayer titles and Xbox live is synonymous with online gaming at this point
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Part of me just wants to sell my Xbox One at this point.
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green butter posted...

Looks like MS is being more tactical with exclusives imo.

They cant compete with Sonys Japanese games and AAA single player exclusives so theyre doubling down on their big franchises (Halo, Forza, Gears) while getting more multiplayer exclusives (sea of thieves, pubg, etc).

I think that is Sonys weak point since they dont have any huge multiplayer titles and Xbox live is synonymous with online gaming at this point

I'm not sure if that's the greatest tactic.

First of all doubling down on their franchises doesn't seem to be working out very well. Both Halo and Gears seem to be going on a downward trend. They're also both multiplayer focused.

Third parties are already focused on developing huge multiplayer games. The biggest multiplayer games on both Xbox and PS4 are third party. That's what they'd need to compete with. I doubt Sea of Thieves is going to be played more than COD WW2 or Destiny 2. Not that it really needs to.

Sony focusing on single player experiences for exclusives seems to be working out well for them. I'm pretty sure the Naughty Dog games do fine multiplayer wise anyway.
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