Ironically, for a long time the criticism of Xbox was its lack of diversity. Now we have a really wide range of genres, but more and more often games that can simply be thrown straight into trash or only mature years after their release - if at all.
Dragging a brand like Halo straight into irrelevance with a completely broken multiplayer loyalty system (which all fans warned of before release). Fuck up the next release of Forza Motorsport after 7 was buried so quickly. Starfield simply needed another year, they weren't on the wrong track, but they hadn't reached their goal. Minecraft Legends has now been switched to End of Life after less than a year - nobody asked for that game anyway.
It's actually more the seminar games like Age of Empires IV, Grounded, Flight Simulator that make it up. I'm also looking forward to the Age of Mythology relaunch rather than the next Gears. After they did a lot of things better with Gears 5, part 6 will certainly take two steps back again. Hellblade 2 and Flight Simulator 2024 will certainly not be system sellers, but they will be entertaining. Big titles like Fable and Perfect Dark were obviously announced far too early and are still a long way off. Only Indiana Jones gives hope, provided Machine Games has not suffered a similar decline as Arkane. But something tells me it will be postponed and not as extensive as some might expect.
Unfortunately, you're absolutely right on the money. MS is doing their best to kill off all of their fan-favorites, or at the very least, hamstringing them and making them something unrecognizable to their fans. They are currently not building up a whole lot of goodwill toward their fans, and it really feels like people are starting to lose hope that good games aren't in the pipeline.
Regarding Starfield- IMO, Bethesda needs to continue work on optimizing their engine, and making it better. Sure, Starfield had the least amount of bugs on release, but have you seen the amount of bugs in Skyrim or the Fallout games? Of course you probably have, so saying there's less bugs doesn't really equate to much.
With regard to Fable, I am onboard with what
Alan Wake
had to say about MS mismanaging their studios. They took a racing game studio with zero RPG experience and are having them build a beloved title from the ground up. Who knows. Maybe they will pull it off, but only time will tell.
I also think that Indiana Jones will be most likely be delayed. The reason I say that is the gameplay they showed looks promising, but it wasn't quite ready for primetime. There are some janky animations, and it's fairly obvious that there's a good way to go since they haven't announced a solid release window. I sincerely hope Machine Games is able to pull off making the game mostly first person.
Edit: tagged the wrong user, oops!
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