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Microsoft Studios (& Partners) Current and Future Landscape

Chris1

Member
I think we should wait till E3 before we start calling doom and gloom. I mean right now we know absolutely nothing about 2018, there should be at LEAST two pretty big exclusives announced at E3 for 2018 that's not Halo Forza Gears.

Don't get me wrong I get where you're coming from and I didn't care much for last E3 either, but I reaaaaally doubt 2018 is gonna be nothing but Halo 6 and Forza Horizon 4. There should be at least two other big exclusives and maybe a smaller one (ori2?).

2013 had a bunch, 2014 had Titanfall and SO, 2015 had ROTR, Ori, Screamride lol, Rare Replay. 2015 had Quantum Break, DR4 and Recore. I'm sure I'm missing a lot.


What can they have / what studios will develop them? Other than Ori 2, I don't know to be honest but they will have some big games for next year. Maybe Fable 4, Splinter Cell? Normally I would have said the new TR aswell but since they switched developers probably not. However all of those are sequels so that's probably gonna be seen as negative, too.

Edit: I just remembered, the guy on here who's name escapes me who leaked Rare working on a pirate game way before it was announced said Battletoads was also in development (not necessarily by Rare). Could be another small game for 2018
if it's not cancelled lol

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Halo 6 will come out but I think they should go onto a destiny style game in the Halo universe afterwards. Not sure about TC, maybe go back to shangheist? But Gears 5 will come out first too.

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And I agree. $60 for SOT will hurt it, while I do think it'll be big, all twitch games are cheaper than $60 or even F2P. There needs to be some sort of low entry or F2P version of it.
 
Next year is Halo 6, Forza H4, and maybe one or two games being announced at this year's E3, like the Ori follow-up and Sea of Thieves could get pushed back there.

Ya'll thinking another Fable is in development or that Splinter Cell is returning as an Xbox exclusive are straight trippin. Don't even let that thought enter your head.
 

JlNX

Member
Looking at google searches to derive interest for crackdown, state of decay or sea of thieves when marketing hasn't even started on these games is pointless. After E3 will be the most telling info, sea of thieves especially as their last showing was so ambiguous and pointless.

Crackdown has been dark since gamescom 2015, so it's obviously not being talked about. It didn't help that we saw so little of the game at gamescom, but that tech demo still gathered a lot of attention based of traffic to certain outlets. Crackdown is the style of game that could do very well, replace gears as microsoft's second biggest IP. But they need to heavily lean into its online, ideally copy GTA online. The cloud will obviously garner it a lot of attention, they need to build on that attention. A E3 demo has to knock it out of the park but this is were Microsoft struggles in presenting it's games, this is their biggest problem.

Sea of thieves does seem like it's a 2018 game, ideally Q1. Sea of thieves isn't garnering attention due to it's state in development and marketing. For a game that has been so badly marketed and shown, is so unknown and yet has over 130 000 alpha sign ups which to me seems fine considering they are still forming the game around this community before they even start marketing it. E3 they will hopefully have learned from their last showing or Microsoft will take over the marketing planning. They need to show the greater systems, they need to show the progression and customisation they have talked about, The different roles that you can fulfil (they talked about you being able to play as a merchant and have a merchant ship, the player is the NPC), raids, show the deeper aspects of your quest system. This yet again another one were they have to present this game properly, Microsoft biggest problem again which is further enhanced by this style of game. Lucky they already have a hardcore community built around the game and the community team has been amazing.

State of Decay is a game that I agree with others in this thread about it being a sleeper hit.
State of Decay hit over 2m million copies sold before YOSE came out on Xbox or Pc. A lot of people on the forum think this is a small game like state of decay 1, but actually it's a AAA sequel. The team size has over tripled and they are using UE4 this time around with it having four years in development at release. It's a trend I have noticed recently with Microsoft that they release low budget small team game ( SOD, KI, ORI, etc) to prove their potential, if they do well they get a bigger sequel. I suspect we will be seeing the same with KI and Ori this year now that they have proven to be big IP that have a lot of room to grow.

Crackdown and State of Decay are the obvious ones that have the biggest potential for Microsoft, new pillars for them as a publisher. Sea of thieves is obviously the risky one that has to little information available to us to determine it's success. It's either going to flop or be successful E3 will be telling, were not going to see destiny level success probably 2-3 million sales thriving community with content drops and micro transactions that will do well for Microsoft and will be good for Rare as a studio. They set up a live team to support Sea of thieves and the rest of the team work on their next project which will also be a GAAS due to the studios restructuring. A steady flows of revenue for a studio is a great place for a studio to be in, it will eventually allow them to expand slowly which probably what Rare wants as a studio. Some people will be happy to here that it will most likely be story driven going by open positions last year.
 

rrc1594

Member
Next year is Halo 6, Forza H4, and maybe one or two games being announced at this year's E3, like the Ori follow-up and Sea of Thieves could get pushed back there.

Ya'll thinking another Fable is in development or that Splinter Cell is returning as an Xbox exclusive are straight trippin. Don't even let that thought enter your head.

What about Killer Instinct?
 

RoKKeR

Member
Next year is Halo 6, Forza H4, and maybe one or two games being announced at this year's E3, like the Ori follow-up and Sea of Thieves could get pushed back there.

Ya'll thinking another Fable is in development or that Splinter Cell is returning as an Xbox exclusive are straight trippin. Don't even let that thought enter your head.

Yeah, I don't expect things to get better in the short term.

Honestly, the two biggest announcements that MS could make at E3 to give me confidence about their future portfolio is 1) a creation of new, internal, 1P studio(s) to make "AAA" titles and 2) expanding/freeing 343 and Coalition to create new IP in addition to building Halo and Gears.

Unfortunately, the results of those moves won't be seen for quite some time. (if they happen at all)
 
MS has definitely struggled to excite with their announcements out-the-gate and get people talking and voraciously excited for their line-up in the same way that Sony has been far more successful with games like Horizon, Crash & God of War; and Nintendo so casually with Zelda.

In terms of big announcements on MS's stage that they have really successfully owned, executed and masterfully taken advantage of the announcement hype to release this gen... is probably only Titanfall and Forza Horizon 3.

To put the context of that Google Trends image relative to how other big game reveals generated more awareness and search interest, here's how they look when compared to Sony's big ones. (Days Gone is too generic a term and Spiderman is never not big, plus movie dilutes search results)

For a separate context, Zelda's interest and awareness around E3 trending are triple that of Crash/God of War.

pXTEbIl.jpg

This has been Microsoft's biggest problem. They have come out with some good to great new IPs this generation but they haven't been able to generate enough interest to kick off any new major franchises. People just don't seem interested in the new IP they have released this generation. Last generation saw Mass Effect and Gears right out of the gate but nothing this generation has even come close to generating that sort of interest.
 
Ori is their best new IP in years. I would take more of the same with a sequel, but I also think they could give it the AAA 3D treatment too. Make it a Metroid Prime / Zelda cross breed. That would be something genuinely different to their usual and more predictable lineup.

I don't really understand Sea Of Thieves. The core concept seems cool but the game needs depth, which so far in about 20 appearances hasn't shown any.

Crackdown and SOD should be fine, and their usual other games. They just need to get working on a few more besides.

Far too early to judge Phil's efforts on exclusives though, so hopefully the landscape is quite different in 5 years time.
 
This has been Microsoft's biggest problem. They have come out with some good to great new IPs this generation but they haven't been able to generate enough interest to kick off any new major franchises. People just don't seem interested in the new IP they have released this generation. Last generation saw Mass Effect and Gears right out of the gate but nothing this generation has even come close to generating that sort of interest.

Another issue is that MS hasn't been able to 'convert' a 3rd party title into this 1st party tentpole, like they did with Bioshock, Mass Effect (as you mentioned), and Call of Duty back on the 360. When we look at the big 3rd parties they did get behind, like BF4/1, DAI, Assassin's Creed Unity, The Division - none of these were able to convert into giant HW pushes for MS. On the opposing side, we saw Sony do this with Watch_Dogs 1, Destiny, Arkham Knight & BLOPS3.
 

Strootman

Member
Looking at google searches to derive interest for crackdown, state of decay or sea of thieves when marketing hasn't even started on these games is pointless. After E3 will be the most telling info, sea of thieves especially as their last showing was so ambiguous and pointless.

Crackdown has been dark since gamescom 2015, so it's obviously not being talked about. It didn't help that we saw so little of the game at gamescom, but that tech demo still gathered a lot of attention based of traffic to certain outlets. Crackdown is the style of game that could do very well, replace gears as microsoft's second biggest IP. But they need to heavily lean into its online, ideally copy GTA online. The cloud will obviously garner it a lot of attention, they need to build on that attention. A E3 demo has to knock it out of the park but this is were Microsoft struggles in presenting it's games, this is their biggest problem.

Sea of thieves does seem like it's a 2018 game, ideally Q1. Sea of thieves isn't garnering attention due to it's state in development and marketing. For a game that has been so badly marketed and shown, is so unknown and yet has over 130 000 alpha sign ups which to me seems fine considering they are still forming the game around this community before they even start marketing it. E3 they will hopefully have learned from their last showing or Microsoft will take over the marketing planning. They need to show the greater systems, they need to show the progression and customisation they have talked about, The different roles that you can fulfil (they talked about you being able to play as a merchant and have a merchant ship, the player is the NPC), raids, show the deeper aspects of your quest system. This yet again another one were they have to present this game properly, Microsoft biggest problem again which is further enhanced by this style of game. Lucky they already have a hardcore community built around the game and the community team has been amazing.

State of Decay is a game that I agree with others in this thread about it being a sleeper hit.
State of Decay hit over 2m million copies sold before YOSE came out on Xbox or Pc. A lot of people on the forum think this is a small game like state of decay 1, but actually it's a AAA sequel. The team size has over tripled and they are using UE4 this time around with it having four years in development at release. It's a trend I have noticed recently with Microsoft that they release low budget small team game ( SOD, KI, ORI, etc) to prove their potential, if they do well they get a bigger sequel. I suspect we will be seeing the same with KI and Ori this year now that they have proven to be big IP that have a lot of room to grow.

Crackdown and State of Decay are the obvious ones that have the biggest potential for Microsoft, new pillars for them as a publisher. Sea of thieves is obviously the risky one that has to little information available to us to determine it's success. It's either going to flop or be successful E3 will be telling, were not going to see destiny level success probably 2-3 million sales thriving community with content drops and micro transactions that will do well for Microsoft and will be good for Rare as a studio. They set up a live team to support Sea of thieves and the rest of the team work on their next project which will also be a GAAS due to the studios restructuring. A steady flows of revenue for a studio is a great place for a studio to be in, it will eventually allow them to expand slowly which probably what Rare wants as a studio. Some people will be happy to here that it will most likely be story driven going by open positions last year.
Source?
 
Next year is Halo 6, Forza H4, and maybe one or two games being announced at this year's E3, like the Ori follow-up and Sea of Thieves could get pushed back there.

Ya'll thinking another Fable is in development or that Splinter Cell is returning as an Xbox exclusive are straight trippin. Don't even let that thought enter your head.
You gotten verified yet?

Don't mean to be rude about it, just last I'd heard you hadn't.
 

JlNX

Member

Job posts last year mentioned work on a story based project. If I remember correctly they were looking for a lead animator for creatures in a story based game in one listing which obviously sea of thieves is not to the point that they have said it has no story. I know story based creatures? it's sounds like fable but don't get your hopes up Shinobi has already described rare as a new IP factory.
 
Another issue is that MS hasn't been able to 'convert' a 3rd party title into this 1st party tentpole, like they did with Bioshock, Mass Effect (as you mentioned), and Call of Duty back on the 360. When we look at the big 3rd parties they did get behind, like BF4/1, DAI, Assassin's Creed Unity, The Division - none of these were able to convert into giant HW pushes for MS. On the opposing side, we saw Sony do this with Watch_Dogs 1, Destiny, Arkham Knight & BLOPS3.

I think that the days of a third party game pushing Xbox Ones in large quantity are over. That ship has sailed. Sony did the right thing and hopped on the Destiny bandwagon early and made it impossible for Microsoft to even market the game. If Microsoft were to do the same on a new IP, they would have to pay a lot of money for the same deal.

Gears, Halo 3, and Mass Effect really pushed the 360 early on in the generation and it paid dividends later on (even though Mass Effect was eventually released the PS3 after EA bought BioWare). I feel like all of their troubles would be cured if they began another big franchise but looking at what they have in the pipeline... it's not promising. I really like State of Decay so I hope that State of Decay 2 is great and sells like gangbusters but I'm not sure it will be the type of game to reach millions of people. The best I see with that franchise is a Bloodborne level of success but I don't think it will ever get to attain the same level of success that Gears of War achieved.
 
Far too early to judge Phil's efforts on exclusives though, so hopefully the landscape is quite different in 5 years time.

Far too early to judge Phil's efforts on exclusives? He's been the head of Xbox publishing in some way, shape, or form for 7+ years. He can absolutely be judged for MGS Publishing output.
 
I'm still a proponent for perfect dark filling the splinter cell gap. Could fill a splinter cell/mgs style gap because perfect dark has aliens, clones and what have you lol.

Probably won't happen, but who knows.

They really do need to do something new from their first party output that can be a new franchise at the level of halo, gears and forza.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Looking at google searches to derive interest for crackdown, state of decay or sea of thieves when marketing hasn't even started on these games is pointless. After E3 will be the most telling info, sea of thieves especially as their last showing was so ambiguous and pointless.

Crackdown has been dark since gamescom 2015, so it's obviously not being talked about. It didn't help that we saw so little of the game at gamescom, but that tech demo still gathered a lot of attention based of traffic to certain outlets. Crackdown is the style of game that could do very well, replace gears as microsoft's second biggest IP. But they need to heavily lean into its online, ideally copy GTA online. The cloud will obviously garner it a lot of attention, they need to build on that attention. A E3 demo has to knock it out of the park but this is were Microsoft struggles in presenting it's games, this is their biggest problem.

Sea of thieves does seem like it's a 2018 game, ideally Q1. Sea of thieves isn't garnering attention due to it's state in development and marketing. For a game that has been so badly marketed and shown, is so unknown and yet has over 130 000 alpha sign ups which to me seems fine considering they are still forming the game around this community before they even start marketing it. E3 they will hopefully have learned from their last showing or Microsoft will take over the marketing planning. They need to show the greater systems, they need to show the progression and customisation they have talked about, The different roles that you can fulfil (they talked about you being able to play as a merchant and have a merchant ship, the player is the NPC), raids, show the deeper aspects of your quest system. This yet again another one were they have to present this game properly, Microsoft biggest problem again which is further enhanced by this style of game. Lucky they already have a hardcore community built around the game and the community team has been amazing.

State of Decay is a game that I agree with others in this thread about it being a sleeper hit.
State of Decay hit over 2m million copies sold before YOSE came out on Xbox or Pc. A lot of people on the forum think this is a small game like state of decay 1, but actually it's a AAA sequel. The team size has over tripled and they are using UE4 this time around with it having four years in development at release. It's a trend I have noticed recently with Microsoft that they release low budget small team game ( SOD, KI, ORI, etc) to prove their potential, if they do well they get a bigger sequel. I suspect we will be seeing the same with KI and Ori this year now that they have proven to be big IP that have a lot of room to grow.

Crackdown and State of Decay are the obvious ones that have the biggest potential for Microsoft, new pillars for them as a publisher. Sea of thieves is obviously the risky one that has to little information available to us to determine it's success. It's either going to flop or be successful E3 will be telling, were not going to see destiny level success probably 2-3 million sales thriving community with content drops and micro transactions that will do well for Microsoft and will be good for Rare as a studio. They set up a live team to support Sea of thieves and the rest of the team work on their next project which will also be a GAAS due to the studios restructuring. A steady flows of revenue for a studio is a great place for a studio to be in, it will eventually allow them to expand slowly which probably what Rare wants as a studio. Some people will be happy to here that it will most likely be story driven going by open positions last year.

Even if you look at youtube viewcount for official crackdown 3 trailer, and the gamescom gameplay the view count is super low compared to other titles. Like under a million low.

That's not good like at all. Especially when you see videos for other games in the millions. Even sea of thieves is really low with the debut trailer being under 700,000 and the gameplay video being just over a million.

When you compare it to gears of war, halo it puts things into perspective a little that outside of GAF excitement for Microsoft's IP's are at a all time low.

Far too early to judge Phil's efforts on exclusives? He's been the head of Xbox publishing in some way, shape, or form for 7+ years. He can absolutely be judged for MGS Publishing output.

Though I think he hasn't done a great job on the New IP and securing IP's department I think his hands are tied budget wise by the higher ups. I bet if he could he would have made a sequel to Voo-doo vince, or at least put way more money into it's remaster and give it a make over. He does love a lot of the unique original xbox games, if given the budget he would definatley green light some. Although I don't know if it was or wasn't his decision to can the Phantom Dust reboot?
 

JlNX

Member
I think that the days of a third party game pushing Xbox Ones in large quantity is over. That ship has sailed. Sony did the right thing and hopped on the Destiny bandwagon early and made it impossible for Microsoft to even market the game. If Microsoft were to do the same on a new IP, they would have to pay a lot of money for the same deal.

Gears, Halo 3, and Mass Effect really pushed the 360 early on in the generation and it paid dividends later on (even though Mass Effect was eventually released the PS3 after EA bought BioWare). I feel like all of their troubles would be cured if they began another big franchise but looking at what they have in the pipeline... it's not promising. I really like State of Decay so I hope that State of Decay 2 is great and sells like gangbusters but I'm not sure it will be the type of game to reach millions of people. The best I see with that franchise is a Bloodborne level of success but I don't think it will ever get to attain the same level of success that Gears of War achieved.

Yep, and going by what Phil has said about exclusive dlc and marketing largely being better spent on other things. I highly doubt we will see them get into that 360 mindset again, which is good for us as owners of the platform that more money is getting poured into features and services (hopefully first party as well) but bad for them marketing their console to people who aren't yet invested in the platform.
 
Far too early to judge Phil's efforts on exclusives? He's been the head of Xbox publishing in some way, shape, or form for 7+ years. He can absolutely be judged for MGS Publishing output.

He might have had the job title, sure. Can't see that he was calling too many shots though under the Mattrick / Whitten regime.

Seems to me that the second half of the 360 life was to primarily focus on the usual suspects, then rely on the superior 3rd party situation and sales numbers. After the RROD fiasco they seemed to shut up shop and focus on profitability.

Edit - With their more adventurous side going into Kinect.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Yep, and going by what Phil has said about exclusive dlc and marketing largely being better spent on other things. I highly doubt we will see them get into that 360 mindset again, which is good for us as owners of the platform that more money is getting poured into features and services (hopefully first party as well) but bad for them marketing their console to people who aren't yet invested in the platform.

Issue is I agree with that, and hope Sony does away with it in the future(unlikely) but MS didn't have anything to take the place of those third party deals to fill in the gaps.

Which is why we talk so much about their out put, studios etc.
 

JlNX

Member
Even if you look at youtube viewcount for official crackdown 3 trailer, and the gamescom gameplay the view count is super low compared to other titles. Like under a million low.

That's not good like at all. Especially when you see videos for other games in the millions. Even sea of thieves is really low with the debut trailer being under 700,000 and the gameplay video being just over a million.

When you compare it to gears of war, halo it puts things into perspective a little that outside of GAF excitement for Microsoft's IP's are at a all time low.

Well if you added together all coverage across all sites it's over a couple of million in views, for what was a bare bones alpha tech demo, at a gaming convention that won't gather the attention of a E3. Games that were far bigger than crackdown at that show that had unveilings had lower attention. I agree on SOT, in that very same post I talk about the awful marketing of it but that also it hasn't been pushed front and centre marketing wise yet and that will most likely be E3. After E3's showing will be very telling.

Excitement for Microsoft IP's is very low, but that is their own fault. I have talked about it a lot before, Microsofts biggest problem is presenting it's games and marketing them. Something that Sony has perfected.
 

Wedzi

Banned
He might have had the job title, sure. Can't see that he was calling too many shots though under the Mattrick / Whitten regime.

Seems to me that the second half of the 360 life was to primarily focus on the usual suspects, then rely on the superior 3rd party situation and sales numbers. After the RROD fiasco they seemed to shut up shop and focus on profitability.

Edit - With their more adventurous side going into Kinect.

What shots has Phil called since being head? Closing Lionhead and PressPlay? Canceling Scalebound, Sea of Thieves, Phantom Dust remake, Shangheist, Fable Legends? Buying Gears? Buying Minecraft?

Granted they've done a lot of good concerning the hardware and service side but this is a thread about games. For a guy who was all games, games, games when he was promoted, he's done very little and there's not much evidence pointing to a turning around of first party at all.
 
Bold prediction: State of Decay 2 is going to outsell Gears 4

The first game sold well over a million copies despite being janky to the point of making Bethesda games look polished. It's the sort of open-world co-op game that is absolutely killing it with the mass market these days. And contrary to what GAF may think, people still like zombies.

Everyone is sleeping on it big time.

This doesn't seem like all that crazy a prediction. I mean, State of Decay was a massive success for what was presumably a relatively conservatively-budgeted digital release. If the sequel gets solid marketing, a retail release (presumably) and has a good showing this E3 it could easily become one of MS's bigger franchises.

Plus, do we have any sales numbers for Gears 4, or has MS never talked about that?

Also, it's kinda worrisome how low is Crackdown but there isn't much to talk about it since nothing has shown since that tech demo.

I believe Shinobi said that things were rough with it for a while, but it's sorted now and the game's not in danger of getting cancelled. Unless you've heard something contrary? Either way, it's a classic case of MS announcing the game far too early. Like, a couple of years too early.

I think there are things they are doing right: Scorpio seems like a nice box, Game Pass is good, Elite controller/BC etc are good but on the games side, they got some serious issues and its hard to work out where they start and end.

I don't really see where they things on the software side are going, maybe they got some good surprises for us, I dont think Scorpio will mean as much as they are hoping for without the software support from MS though

They're doing everything right in terms of hardware and firmware, but yeah - there's definitely room to improve when it comes to games. This could well be their most important E3 ever in my opinion, as they need to come out swinging with exciting new software to demonstrate Scorpio.

RE: Rare/SoT - Honestly, considering how budgeting has been for that project (unnecessarily high) and that it's going to be launching as a $60 boxed product, I do get the feeling that some very rough stuff might befall them if they don't do well. And honestly, sales expectations are already unreasonably high for SoT. They are going about that title completely wrong.

If I remember correctly, HW2's sales were really poor. No idea on Voodoo Vince.

Have they openly discussed its budget and sales expectations?!

I also wonder whether Halo Wars 2 sold well enough to justify another. Creative Assembly actually have a team called Halo Wars 2 team, so I would assume that was formed after a contract was signed between MS and Sega for multiple sequels. I wonder if they needed to hit a sales milestone for that contract to remain.
 
What shots has Phil called since being head? Closing Lionhead and PressPlay? Canceling Scalebound, Sea of Thieves, Phantom Dust remake, Shangheist, Fable Legends? Buying Gears? Buying Minecraft?

Granted they've done a lot of good concerning the hardware and service side but this is a thread about games. For a guy who was all games, games, games when he was promoted, he's done very little and there's not much evidence pointing to a turning around of first party at all.

Yes he has called some pretty big shots, some of them not seen as positive on the surface. I doubt they closed the studios or cancelled the games just for the lolz though.

Spencer has been fully in charge for 3 years, not quite enough time to start knocking out major new IP made by 'his hand'. We are still getting the tail end of some of the games announced at or near the XB1 launch. So yeah, I will judge him and the situation in a few more years.
 
Yes he has called some pretty big shots, some of them not seen as positive on the surface. I doubt they closed the studios or cancelled the games just for the lolz though.

Spencer has been fully in charge for 3 years, not quite enough time to start knocking out major new IP made by 'his hand'. We are still getting the tail end of some of the games announced at or near the XB1 launch. So yeah, I will judge him and the situation in a few more years.

Years 3 to 5 are going to be illustrative. Most of what's been announced were already in play prior to him taking over.
 
Years 3 to 5 are going to be illustrative. Most of what's been announced were already in play prior to him taking over.

Precisely.

We all know they need to improve the situation, but you have to be realistic about it too. They can't just pull major new IP out of thin air. They aren't going to stop making the guaranteed money makers either, that would be equally stupid.
 
Precisely.

We all know they need to improve the situation, but you have to be realistic about it too. They can't just pull major new IP out of thin air. They aren't going to stop making the guaranteed money makers either, that would be equally stupid.

They need to get another team going at the coalition. To me rod is a guy who can hit targets and quality, he knows how to get shit done and I think TC with another team on a new ip would do well for them, I don't expect them to stop making gears but equally I'm not sure how good those sales were for that franchise, not very id say.

If any big new ip is gonna come from internal studios it's going to be by the guy who knows how to project manage and make tough decisions. Maybe he doesn't want a new ip idk and I love Rare but to me Rod is the man they should go to and say "get us the next big thing" which is what TC were supposed to do

It won't happen but it should
 

Zukkoyaki

Member
They need to get another team going at the coalition. To me rod is a guy who can hit targets and quality, he knows how to get shit done and I think TC with another team on a new ip would do well for them, I don't expect them to stop making gears but equally I'm not sure how good those sales were for that franchise, not very id say.

If any big new ip is gonna come from internal studios it's going to be by the guy who knows how to project manage and make tough decisions. Maybe he doesn't want a new ip idk and I love Rare but to me Rod is the man they should go to and say "get us the next big thing" which is what TC were supposed to do

It won't happen but it should
I agree, Rod is one of if not their most experienced and high profile dev talent. Plus Gears isn't as huge as it used to be so keeping The Coalition going as an IP factory may not be worth it. They aren't far from where Guerrilla Games was before Horizon. They could continue making games that are fairly successful and reliably move 2-3 million units like Killzone or they could try and create something new and special.

We keep going back to this but Casey Hudson works for Microsoft. It's a shame that they aren't throwing everything and the kitchen sink at him to create something special. But I suppose he may no longer be interested in leading a massive game production.
 
They need to get another team going at the coalition. To me rod is a guy who can hit targets and quality, he knows how to get shit done and I think TC with another team on a new ip would do well for them, I don't expect them to stop making gears but equally I'm not sure how good those sales were for that franchise, not very id say.

If any big new ip is gonna come from internal studios it's going to be by the guy who knows how to project manage and make tough decisions. Maybe he doesn't want a new ip idk and I love Rare but to me Rod is the man they should go to and say "get us the next big thing" which is what TC were supposed to do

It won't happen but it should

Yeah I agree I'm not a fan of the Gears acquisition. I mean I can see why they would buy the IP given the choice, but they have enough repetitiveness with Halo and Forza without doing Gears games too lol.

They should have done a major revamp of the IP if anything, not a continuation of the last 3+ games.
 

SEGAvangelist

Gold Member
I agree, Rod is one of if not their most experienced and high profile dev talent. Plus Gears isn't as huge as it used to be so keeping The Coalition going as an IP factory may not be worth it. They aren't far from where Guerrilla Games was before Horizon. They could continue making games that are fairly successful and reliably move 2-3 million units like Killzone or they could try and create something new and special.

We keep going back to this but Casey Hudson works for Microsoft. It's a shame that they aren't throwing everything and the kitchen sink at him to create something special. But I suppose he may no longer be interested in leading a massive game production.

So true. Casey Hudson leading a new project for Xbox would be wonderful.
 
They got software support from thrid party, that's all MS need.

Not when your much stronger competition is getting that same support, and often exclusive marketing deals for the biggest third party games. We saw how much that benefited Microsoft last gen, and we're seeing Sony reap the benefits this generation.
 

m23

Member
They need to get another team going at the coalition. To me rod is a guy who can hit targets and quality, he knows how to get shit done and I think TC with another team on a new ip would do well for them, I don't expect them to stop making gears but equally I'm not sure how good those sales were for that franchise, not very id say.

If any big new ip is gonna come from internal studios it's going to be by the guy who knows how to project manage and make tough decisions. Maybe he doesn't want a new ip idk and I love Rare but to me Rod is the man they should go to and say "get us the next big thing" which is what TC were supposed to do

It won't happen but it should

Rod is such a great get for Microsoft.
 
Yeah I agree I'm not a fan of the Gears acquisition. I mean I can see why they would buy the IP given the choice, but they have enough repetitiveness with Halo and Forza without doing Gears games too lol.

They had to buy gears, you don't let a franchise you help build that big go multiplat or go stale if epic don't want it and someone at ms who knows the numbers better than me will probably tell me I'm wrong here, but I don't think they needed a gears game out in 2016.
I think they could and should've continued with shangheist, built the gears team up, alongside it and had them do some remasters of all the games and build it up for 2018 Gears of War 4 or something after the new ip was launched.

Fwiw I really liked gears 4, I think they did really good work with it and look forward to what is next but I also think they made a mistake in their approach. Clearing everything for it, did it do them much good in the end?

If Phil wants to show me the numbers I'll happily keep quiet, I don't doubt it did better than a new ip likely would've but… I think all these new ip cancellations (shangheist, obsidian new ip, Scalebound and to a certain extent Karoo) didn't really do much for them
 
Yup and he joined a couple years ago to work on HoloLens which has kinda fallen off the face of the earth.

I'm still holding out hope that they're gonna retask those studios into something more traditional, even if it's not AAA. HoloLens does not need that kinda first party gaming support.
 
I think we should wait till E3 before we start calling doom and gloom. I mean right now we know absolutely nothing about 2018, there should be at LEAST two pretty big exclusives announced at E3 for 2018 that's not Halo Forza Gears.

Don't get me wrong I get where you're coming from and I didn't care much for last E3 either, but I reaaaaally doubt 2018 is gonna be nothing but Halo 6 and Forza Horizon 4. There should be at least two other big exclusives and maybe a smaller one (ori2?).

2013 had a bunch, 2014 had Titanfall and SO, 2015 had ROTR, Ori, Screamride lol, Rare Replay. 2015 had Quantum Break, DR4 and Recore. I'm sure I'm missing a lot.


What can they have / what studios will develop them? Other than Ori 2, I don't know to be honest but they will have some big games for next year. Maybe Fable 4, Splinter Cell? Normally I would have said the new TR aswell but since they switched developers probably not. However all of those are sequels so that's probably gonna be seen as negative, too.

Edit: I just remembered, the guy on here who's name escapes me who leaked Rare working on a pirate game way before it was announced said Battletoads was also in development (not necessarily by Rare). Could be another small game for 2018
if it's not cancelled lol

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Halo 6 will come out but I think they should go onto a destiny style game in the Halo universe afterwards. Not sure about TC, maybe go back to shangheist? But Gears 5 will come out first too.

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And I agree. $60 for SOT will hurt it, while I do think it'll be big, all twitch games are cheaper than $60 or even F2P. There needs to be some sort of low entry or F2P version of it.

No offence but we hear "wait till E3" every year and the first party thing doesn't seem to quieten down. It's been pretty consistent since around 2010.
 
Though I think he hasn't done a great job on the New IP and securing IP's department I think his hands are tied budget wise by the higher ups. I bet if he could he would have made a sequel to Voo-doo vince, or at least put way more money into it's remaster and give it a make over. He does love a lot of the unique original xbox games, if given the budget he would definatley green light some. Although I don't know if it was or wasn't his decision to can the Phantom Dust reboot?

Oh, I absolutely agree that his hands are tied in a lot of ways, but there are also some key mistakes that he could've circumvented, like over-spending on producing certain titles, or setting budgets against unreasonable sales goals for some of their projects this generation, to just not jumping on specific growth opportunities when they arose (like not aggressively pursuing Kojima when he got freed up, letting Playground's 2nd project go 3rd party, or not signing sequels for games the Xbox base did rally around this gen).

And the PD reboot deal & cancellation was done under his watch - of course he was involved and gave it the ultimate yes/no.

I'm still holding out hope that they're gonna retask those studios into something more traditional, even if it's not AAA. HoloLens does not need that kinda first party gaming support.

I wouldn't hold my breath. MS is more interested in starting initiatives on other fronts & they need software developers to do it. After yesterday's fantastic demo of what Facebook is cooking up, you're likely going to see MS peel even more assets away onto ventures with far bigger potential.
 
Rod is one of if not their most experienced and high profile dev talent. Plus Gears isn't as huge as it used to be so keeping The Coalition going as an IP factory may not be worth it.
Rod went back to MS because they said he could work on Gears. He even went and got a Gears tattoo. MS should probably open more studios, but TC should stick to Gears.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Ori is their best new IP in years. I would take more of the same with a sequel, but I also think they could give it the AAA 3D treatment too. Make it a Metroid Prime / Zelda cross breed. That would be something genuinely different to their usual and more predictable lineup.

I don't really understand Sea Of Thieves. The core concept seems cool but the game needs depth, which so far in about 20 appearances hasn't shown any.

Crackdown and SOD should be fine, and their usual other games. They just need to get working on a few more besides.

Far too early to judge Phil's efforts on exclusives though, so hopefully the landscape is quite different in 5 years time.

5 Years? What has the landscape for Xbox been doing for the past 3-4?

Phil has been in the driver seat like Sneakers said and even in a head publishing position for much longer over seeing software.

What has he been doing then for the last 3 years? We should have seen or heard of projects by now at least in early stages by new developers.
 

Chris1

Member
No offence but we hear "wait till E3" every year and the first party thing doesn't seem to quieten down. It's been pretty consistent since around 2010.
E3 2013 and E3/Gamescom 2014 were really good for new IPs/exclusives in general. A lot of them got cancelled but lol. 2015 was more BC and Elite but still had Recore, Rare Replay and some others I might be forgetting. 2016 I won't defend, I think their only new reveal was State of Decay? Pitiful for sure.

This isn't like any other E3s though, we know literally nothing coming next year. This hasn't happened in a long time (maybe ever?). Unless you believe 2018 will have Forza and Halo only, they are gonna announce some stuff at E3 this year. But I think that's a ridiculous thing to believe considering the amount of exclusives they've put out every year from 2013 through 2017. What developers/games? No idea, but there will be something. You don't go from putting out 5+ semi big games a year for like 4 years straight, right down to 2 in the space of a year.
 
5 Years? What has the landscape for Xbox been doing for the past 3-4?

Phil has been in the driver seat like Sneakers said and even in a head publishing position for much longer over seeing software.

What has he been doing then for the last 3 years? We should have seen or heard of projects by now at least in early stages by new developers.

What you think in 3 years they can jettison everything already in the pipeline and make loads of new stuff instead, or would even want to?

LOL

Whatever is truly new and coming from Spencer's direction will be made apparent over the next 5 years. And no, I don't believe Spencer was controlling much game wise during Mattricks reign, as already stated.
 
What you think in 3 years they can jettison everything already in the pipeline and make loads of new stuff instead, or would even want to?

LOL

Whatever is truly new and coming from Spencer's direction will be made apparent over the next 5 years. And no, I don't believe Spencer was controlling much game wise during Mattricks reign, as already stated.

Also, just think about all the Kinect software he probably cancelled the first couple months on the job. During these past couple of years, I'm sure a ton of Kinect games would have come out if the original vision for the Xbox One had actually succeeded.
 
Spencer has been head of the Xbox division for over 3 years at this point. I think if, when he got in post, he commissioned a bunch of new stuff then at least some of it will be ready to show at E3 this year. If we assume most new IPs need 4-5 years' development then the timing is right to be able to reveal at least some of their new first-party content. They really need to land at least one hit with a new IP on the scale of Gears, Splatoon or Horizon Zero Dawn.
 
Also, just think about all the Kinect software he probably cancelled the first couple months on the job. During these past couple of years, I'm sure a ton of Kinect games would have come out if the original vision for the Xbox One had actually succeeded.

No doubt. Big changes and big games take a lot of time. Plus it's not like they haven't put out a reasonable amount of variety as it is. Some people act like they have made nothing lol.
 

Mifune

Mehmber
I feel like Insomniac was a missed opportunity for Microsoft. Sunset Overdrive was fantastic and should have been the start of a fruitful relationship regardless of sales. But now between Ratchet and Spider-Man, IG is back to being a Sony studio as far as consoles are considered.
 

Zeta Oni

Member
Slightly off topic from the current conversation, but...

Where is the Phantom Dust rerelease?

Less than 2 months until E3 and there's no release date, gameplay footage, marketplace presence, and barely any media at all (only one in-game screenshot actually) for a game scheduled for this spring.

I have no concerns about it releasing, but even if it drops in May, I was hoping they would have started showing it by now.

Unless there's more to the story ;)
 

blakep267

Member
Slightly off topic from the current conversation, but...

Where is the Phantom Dust rerelease?

Less than 2 months until E3 and there's no release date, gameplay footage, marketplace presence, and barely any media at all (only one in-game screenshot actually) for a game scheduled for this spring.

I have no concerns about it releasing, but even if it drops in May, I was hoping they would have started showing it by now.

Unless there's more to the story ;)
It could Be a games with gold for May
 
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