It won’t have escaped your notice that a ton of information regarding Xbox leaked this morning, including a controller, new Xbox Series X|S and a ton of upcoming Bethesda games. This time, it’s an email sent by Phil Spencer that interests us.
A “disastrous” 16-month period
On December 8, 2021, Halo Infinite was released, the brand new opus of one of Xbox’s flagship franchises. Unfortunately, the title greatly disappointed due to a lack of content and the fact that it clearly did not have the shoulders to be the standard bearer for Xbox Series X|S.
Following its release, we cannot say that Xbox players were bombarded with games developed by the manufacturer, and especially AAA games. This is indeed what Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, pointed out in an email sent to Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, Sarah Bond, vice-president of Xbox, Jamie Leder, CEO of Zenimax , Jerret West, chief marketing officer at Xbox, and Tim Stuart, chief financial officer at Xbox.
We keep talking about one AAA per quarter in the service and it looks like we’re likely going to go through a period of almost 16 months between big exclusive launches on our platform, with Halo Infinite being our last on December 8, 2021. C This is truly a dire situation for us, given how much we have invested in content across the studios in our content fund GP. […] We all need to understand that the situation we currently find ourselves in is a failure of our production planning and execution. […] We have faced difficult situations before, we will do so again. I am frustrated with our current situation, but we will get through this. The most important thing is to build a winning plan. This is what we must work towards.
It is true that the period between Halo Infinite and Redfall may have been very long for players fond of big productions, although Arkane Austin’s last title was not up to current standards. We finally had to wait for the release of Starfield at the beginning of the month to find a rhythm of releases of large, qualitative productions.
In the following weeks, Forza Motorsport will be available on Xbox Series
Let us remember, however, that during this difficult period, titles full of quality, but with smaller budgets, have emerged, such as Pentiment, Grounded and Hi-Fi RUSH.
Let’s hope that Xbox now manages to deliver at least one AAA per quarter so as not to relive this “disastrous” period again.
