While I would certainly be OK with MS going out and buying some studios to counter what Sony has been doing, I also agree that MS needs more big 2nd party exclusives, especially of the singleplayer variety. I mean look at the AAA 2nd party deals we have heard about so far, Contraband: Co-op, Project Dragon- Multiplayer, CrossFireX- Singleplayer and Multiplayer but the main focus is the Multiplayer. And that is on top of a good many of their 1st party games being Multiplayer or co-op focused, like Redfall and State of Decay 3. 

MS needs to get some more big singleplayer games in development through 2nd party. 2nd party JP games would be nice as well, it's downright criminal that Phil/Peter doesn't seem likely to have gone out and gotten us this generation's Scalebound yet, go out and make that deal and then this time make sure that it doesn't get cancelled like Scalebound was.

Idk why people think Xbox needs to acquire more companies. They very recently got the entirety of zenimax. Timed exclusives suck for xbox fans but I dont know why the response isnt for Xbox to get more timed exclusives but instead buy out entire companies and completely lock out entire franchises from Sony & Nintendo forever

Well, there were rumours that they were looking into acquiring WBIE at the same time as Bethesda, God knows who else, cause, these kinds of rumours are the hardest to pinpoint, this stuff happens at the very top of the chain of command so it's difficult to say for sure.

However, I SERIOUSLY doubt that if Bethesda somehow fell through, Microsoft didn't have a backup plan, they're likely talking to dozens of studios and even publishers constantly about the potential of future acquisitions.

3 years isn't long at all for games, most established franchises alone take 3-4 years (AAA), New IPs take even longer, then you throw in COVID which knocked about a year or two off a lot of games, and please don't say it didn't affect Sony as some do cause Sony delayed quite a few titles But Sony's 1st party didn't have to be completely revamped so they had a lot of backup and studios meeting prior commitments.

If we're panicking over 'rumours' for titles years out then here's what is apparently Microsoft's internal line-up according to Jeff Grubb.

Summer-Holiday for 2021 have been great, early 2022 will be dry but we always knew that...Holiday 2022 will be massive, 2023 will be insane, a dry early 21 won't be too devastating, Lol.

I think Hellblade 2 and/or Stated of Decay 3 will be released next year.

If this end up being true, I wouldn't call it light or dry year. Especially since it is a year promising to be very strong from 3rd party multiplats.

Let's wait until The Game Awards later this year to know more about the road map of 2022.

Need to get more posts huh...

I want MS to buy another dev/publisher. With game pass increasing in numbers, I feel like they will eventually have to increase the price of the service. Buy up another studio and or publisher to help with even more games come 2024/25. Plus they still need to round off the edges with genres; fighting, 3rd person adventure, etc.

@Shika I asked some dick about Project Eve but he never responded, is that game coming to Xbox? That was my most anticipated game shown. Day one cop.

Apparently when it was first announced in 2019, Project EVE was multiplat PS4/Xbox One. And then in 2020, they showed some new screenshots and the press release said it had moved to PS5/Xbox Series, dropping the last gen versions. Hopefully it is still multiplat and Sony didn't timed hat it for PS5.