Didn't bother reading that article, I stopped following Ryan when he rudely suggested that Obsidian should cancel all their projects to work on The Elder Scrolls and so did Dan, another IGN employee. I won't say Ryan isn't an Xbox fan, he absolutely is, but he also has some clownish takes sometimes. He also criticised Rise of the Tomb Raider timed exclusivity and praised Sony's timed exclusivity, so I feel like he gets swept up in the drama sometimes.
Ironically, with this article, would leave us with no The Outer Worlds 2 or Avowed in the near future, no Grounded which was very popular, no GOTY Pentiment...All to add an extra 200 employees to a project which isn't even in production yet and probably decrease its development time by a grand total of a year if that.
His article may have a point, but to be honest, I feel like if someone actually put the thought into it then they would see why the AAAs are taking a long time to arrive. Do I like it? No, is it Microsoft's fault? Absolutely but there is valid reasons and it's a combination of XGS essentially 'rebooting' in 2018, Covid, Microsoft announcing things too early and AAAs nowadays taking like 3 years at minimum for sequels and up to 6 years for new IPs/reboots.
I could write a list but I've done it before and I know people are getting frustrated with the lack of AAAs even with there being reasons for it so it's kind of like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Hopefully this 2nd half of the year is the start of Xbox finally achieving their goal of one AAA per quarter and the release schedule is finally lined up.
XGS has delivered multiple high quality exclusives since 2020 and the only real dud was a Bethesda project which they weren't paying attention to, which was their fault for sure, but it's clearly an exception to the rule and a title which was in development before Xbox acquired Bethesda, a title which wasn't in Arkane's wheelhouse, one which Bethesda Softworks chose to release (like it or not, Bethesda still makes these decisions for themselves).
It absolutely does not bare reflection on the rest of XGS who operate differently under different leadership, who are all mostly doing things in their wheelhouse, Xbox screwed up by not paying enough attention to Bethesda Softworks due to "limited integration" and giving them the space to manage themselves, Bethesda Softworks screwed up by chasing multiplayer trends (shouldn't be an issue now).
Redfall will no doubt in my mind be the exception to the rule of a stream of high quality release.
Anyway, I did open the article but I immediately rolled my eyes and closed it when I read the line about Phil being too nice to fire anyone.
Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 09 May 2023
