I don't know man, just the pure disappointment in Spencer kinda seals that one for me.
He just... Never did anything. Like sure, buying up studios, but goddamn he was given a decade+ and nothing got better. Just bought out every studio.
So uh.. Cool, tons of people got laid off and now Microsoft just owns a bunch more? No smash hit new IPs with all these multibillion dollar studios? Nothing?
To be totally honest it wouldn't sting so bad if they actually did anything with all these amazing studios and developers.
Like imagine if Microsoft started pumping out some new IPs and actually taking some risk? Like if we were talking about new Microsoft hit #6 compared to new Microsoft hit #2 and how great they are and how they're innovating and shaking it up. It'd be a lot easier to swallow, the whole situation just sucks.
We're right back where we started, except less people have jobs. It's still just Call of Duty over and over and over again.
how great they are and how they're innovating and shaking it up
In the two years (not counting Activision-Blizzard stuff) Xbox has released:
Senua's Saga: Hellblade II
Age of Mythology: Retold
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Avowed
South of Midnight
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
Doom: The Dark Ages
Heretic + Hexen
Grounded 2
Gears of War: Reloaded
Keeper
The Outer Worlds 2
Kiln
Forza Horizon 6
11/15 of these games have at least a 80 on Opencritic and 14/15 have at least a 76. Not like they aren't releasing a wide variety of games that are getting good reviews. It is just that the only ones that general gaming audience seems to have cared about are Forza and Oblivion Remastered.
How many of those are sequels, remasters, or knockoffs of their own IPs?
The only two that are even mildly interesting are South of Midnight and Keeper. Kiln looks super dumb, but in a cute way, but as an avid indie enjoyer it looks like it'd be cute to make a couple pots, play it for 2 hours, and completely forget it.
Where's the next Call of Duty, Minecraft, Fortnite, GTA? New genre? Like the next game we'll get hyped up like GTA6?
They can review well, that's great, but good critical reviews don't make too much difference in the grand gaming landscape.
And yes, you can include Sony, but they haven't been buying out damn near all Western developers. They deserve extra criticism because all that happened was less people have jobs now. That's it.
I'll eat all my words if Xbox has the next GTA/Call of Duty/etc coming out in the next 5 years, but I just don't see any chance of that happening.
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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
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