...if you had said in 2010 "so, who can MS work with to bring new titles to Xbox", do you really think anyone would have said "Double Helix could probably do something with the Killer Instinct IP"? Really?
Yes, Double Helix would've been on the short list for external developers that a publisher could go to for a medium-production-value game in established IP. In 2010, their previous projects included work-for-hire on
Front Mission,
Silent Hill,
Star Wars, and many more.
That's the whole point, we are clueless about what studios MS might hired.
Clueless =/= doesn't exist.
There's a difference between knowing who has been hired (and for what IP), and knowing who
could be hired for sizeable games, but aren't known to be working on any. Due to so much consolidation and closure last gen, that second list is shorter than ever.
The poster is saying it can be someone unknown. Like, would you have ever guessed Zoë Mode, Sumo Digital, Double Helix, Creative Assembly, Armature, Platinum, Darkside Games (ya exactly), etc would be working on exclusives beforehand? They are saying it could be SOMEONE, we never know who they will partner with.
Zoë Mode - They're a division of Kuju, who have long experience with outsourced IP (some exclusive) like
Advance Wars,
Silent Hill, and
Pokemon. Zoë Mode themselves previously co-developed an Xbox 360 exclusive,
Haunt.
Sumo Digital - They are a big outsourcing dev, and have made exclusives and/or established IP games at a prodigious rate.
Xbox Fitness was not their first Microsoft exclusive (or their last).
Double Helix - See above.
Creative Assembly - With Ensemble shut down, they're one of very few options that could've been hired to make
Halo Wars 2.
Armature - Had years of experience doing ports of established IP. Note that even for the medium-scale
ReCore they split dev duties with Comcept and Asobo (other established for-hire houses), so I'm not sure how large a project they could manage themselves.
Platinum - This is one of the few independent AAA studios that does new-IP exclusives. The only thing surprising about
Scalebound was that Platinum already had so much other stuff on their plate.
Darkside Games - Their outsourced art has appeared in games for years, including exclusives.
Phantom Dust was an attempt to move to a more visible tier, which unfortunately didn't work out.
My point is not that Microsoft can't possibly have any third-party exclusives lined up. (In an earlier post, I even predicted one I think might happen.) The point is that there are only so many studios out there who both make high-production-value games, and are not already working on something we know. We can't guess exactly what titles are coming, exactly from who--the possibilities are too extensive--but what does come out is a lot less surprising than you imply. Devs have a real tendency to find a niche and stay in their comfort zone; branching out is rare. We can predict with startling accuracy that most of this year's biggest games will have outsourced work to TOSE, Streamline, or Glass Egg, for example.
When new partnerships are announced, I don't expect them to be surprising. That doesn't mean they won't be meaningful, of course.