| LudicrousSpeed said It's only a "free pass" if people agree with your criticism. Different strokes for different folks. Their "abysmal" output has been pretty overblown, mostly because the first party studios they recently added, all had prior commitments that needed to be honored. But in the last two years I've gotten Wasteland 3, Gears Tactics, Outer Worlds, Battletoads, Flight Simulator, multiple Age of Empires remasters, Grounded, Bleeding Edge, Minecraft Dungeons, and more for free*. Not to mention the big third party games they put onto GamePass that basically feel like first party releases, like Dirt 5, MLB 21, Outriders, Doom Eternal, etc. Lots of Xbox fans don't bitch a lot about the output because we are literally drowning in quality games to play. And of course, we understand that with 23 studios slowed by prior commitments and COVID, the release of the beast is just a matter of time :) * - By "free" I mean for like.. $1 more a month than I would normally be paying for Gold |
To be fair, I have to clarify that my criticism came from a place of huge bias. I usually don't like xbox games and I never owned an xbox. So it is no surprise that all the games you listed for the last two years of first party output (and I understand it is an incomplete list) do not interest me at all.
Having said that, the leaked internal review from TLoU2 from the xbox guys, that stated something along the lines of "this is the new benchmark we hope to achieve at some point" is very telling. I absolutely hated TLoU2, but its quality is undeniable. The release of such a game is an event. None of the games you listed feel anywhere nearly as big as this.
Than again, not all games have to be big AAA action adventure story heavy games Sony seems to bet on. Variety is good and there seems to be quite some coming from xbox first party as of late.
I guess what I'm saying is this: Microsoft has nigh infinite money. And it is obvious that they are willing to invest heavily in xbox. With this as a premise, I really would have liked to see 2, or 3 more really big heavy hitters coming from their first party in the last 2 years.
Additionally, I don't think it is right to celebrate a company for announcing a game. Sure, be glad that they work on something, but they do not provide me with any tangible value before I can actually play those games. So in congruence no sort, or amount of value should be added to them (like good will, brand loyalty, actually ordering their box, etc.)
In short: talk is cheap. So here is to hoping that fable, halo, perfect dark, avowed, etc. are going to release as soon as possible and be even better than everybody is hoping for.
