Once again, followed by next to nothing in 2022. That is exactly the lack of consistency I'm talking about. Not sure why that is hard for you to understand or why it is controversial.
For the record, I praised Microsoft last year when they won Publisher of the Year. I enjoyed Halo Infinite and absolutely loved Psychonauts 2. I'll be right back here praising them in 2023 if they deliver kickass games with Starfield and Redfall. I'll critical if they don't.
That is being more than fair. I really have no idea how anyone can have a problem with that.
Every company has a year with less games than they hope.
This year there was two first party games. Pentament and Grounded. Could count Deathloop, but meh. Pretty light on.
Sony in 2019 had one game from their first party studios.. Days gone, an average game with a 71% Meta.
Won't count MLB as it's a yearly minor update.
Should everyone have been claiming Sony had no games and they need to get their studios to pull their heads in?
Nah, because they had a decent 2018 and there was some good games scheduled to drop in 2020.
Microsoft is coming off an era of terrible investment in first party studios. They thought that everything was moving to third party and that there wasn't a need to invest in that area. They weren't alone in that either. Sony made no investments in new game studios during the whole PS4 era, and infact like Microsoft they actually shut down some good studios like Evolution, however they had alot more studios to start off with, so never got themselves into the same hole as MS.
Thankfully both Microsoft and Sony have decided that moving forward the more first party exclusives the better.
Microsoft deserved everything they copped during the Xbox One era. I was one of them front and centre calling them out. Infact I never bought an Xbox One in protest for their horseshit console and always on DRM.
I bought a PS4 and didn't get an Xbox until they released the One X.
So like you I will call them out for stupid shit and then say they did good when they do well. Same with Sony.
I am.ultra critical of how Sony and Jim Ryan are acting with the AKB acquisition. They have embarrassed themselves and have shown the most hypocritical attitude I could imagine.
But, I admire their first party studios and the quality of the product they put out. Infact I.put a thread up saying how I thought the hard work they did to work on the PS3 Cell made then the amazing technical studios they are today.
My point in all of this is that MS has the studios. They have the games in development. On top of their own studios they are also using high quality third party studios like Asobo, IO Interactive and Avalanche Studios to make brand new exclusive games for Xbox. They arnt just paying for timed exclusives, they are financing the whole deal outright and publishing the games themselves. We all know these games are going to come. We know what is coming next year. Forza MS, Starfield, Redfall at a minimum and possibly 2 or more on top of that.
We have had Covid disrupt their release schedule as well on top of that.
They have done everything right to fix the exclusive content gap.
Any reasonable person can say " yeah, there's alot coming down the pipe and sooner rather than later there will be more exclusives coming than people will know what to do with.
As an Xbox gamer I am very excited by what's coming.