First of all, I apologize for my poor English, I'm not a native speaker.

Then I continue with the main topic of this thread.

Of all the IPs on the Xbox belt, which ones do you think will flourish and prosper? Plus, which ones do you think will disappear completely, or at least become something secondary and minor?

In my opinion Fable, Hell blade, State of Decay, Avowed, Redfall, anything made by "Compulsion Games", the wolfenstein, Prey, Dishonored, perhaps even Gears of War (!?), all these, and others, are already dead, maybe 1 more game or 2, but in the end... everyone goes inside the "bag of oblivion"...

I speak respectfully but realistically... Xbox now has too many "Mega IPs"! It makes no sense to invest, and take risks, with "smaller IPs" and so a lot will die or be swept to "near irrelevance"!

I don't mean to be pessimistic, but think for a minute:
Xbox can be "super liberal", give freedom to their studios, take risks on "new IP's", invest again in "modestly successful IPs" of the past, accept financial losses as well as some modest gains or... They can start investing only on the "golden IPs", those that cost them more than $75Bi, and "invite" (read demand) their studios to work only on these extremely popular IPs, which practically print money with gigantic profits and which have a very low chance of failure...

Yup, I think the second option is more realistic, and that means a lot of franchises are going to die and a lot of studios are going to (1) be tied to an existing IP (2) just do support work. Damn, I can already see 10 (maybe more) studios of them producing only Halo, Elder Scroll and CoD, non-stop!

Having said all that, my list of top 10 Ip's that "possibly" will be dominants within the Xbox and that will likely "expand into new genres". ( when I say expand into new genres, think Diablo "souls", "God of" Warcraft, Super smash "xbox" bros., and many others... as with Nintendo's Mario, which I divided into kart, tennis, golf, paper , etc.)

1 - Call of Duty.
2 - Call of Duty. ( it's Call of duty damn, it takes 2 positions, and at least 4-5 studios pumping CoD every year!)
3 - Elder Scrolls.
4 - Warcraft.
5 - Diablo.
6 - Fallout.
7- Overwatch.
8 - Forza Horizon.
9 - Minecraft.
10 - Halo.

Do you agree with me? Do you also think that Microsoft will focus on its best IPs, which cost +$75Bi, and start printing money with these juggernauts... Or do you think that there is room to explore a little bit of everything, studios will remain free, even if does it involve taking risks and, almost certainly, making less profit?

Thank you for your attention, I hope there are civilized and fun discussions.

No, I actually anticipate a reduction in CoD games under MS. A large driving point in MS buying these studios and pubs is to push more content for gamepass and xcloud. Focusing on those 9 IP's seems counter intuitive to that goal. Plus the fact that Xbox would have 32 studios (and many more teams within those various studios) making games. I fully expect a wide variety of games to come from Xbox both big and small.

I anticipate a shift to mobile gaming. CoD mobile is raking in the dough, Diablo immortal is the next project for Blizzard. This acquisition will give MS (more) inroads with Tencent who helped develop CoD mobile. Plus now Candy Crush is also part of MS' portfolio.

MS will begin making more mobile spin offs of their big franchises, or rather make them more suitable for mobile gaming to prop up gamepass for smart phones. That's where you print money. There are 6 billion smart phones in the world. That's the big fish.

As long as Microsoft doesn't make all of Activision one big CoD studio, like Activision planned, I'm fine.

Conker.

This is an interesting point and it makes me a little confused in their mobile strategy...

It always seemed to me that Xbox's goal was Gamepass and Xcloud, "Gaas" where players pay a subscription to play their games, use of "cloud games" where you don't need "certain hardware" to play ok... Then suddenly, they embrace a completely different model "F2P" with Candy Crush, CoD mobile, Diablo immortal.

Do they want to introduce subscription to play these games, similar to apple arcade? I honestly think it's a bad idea, f2P is king on cell phones and that's not going to change! I could be very wrong, but Gamepass and Xcloud don't really have much of a chance on mobile devices, they'll probably be successful on TVs in the living room, but not on cell phones and tablets.

honestly it seems to me that they want to invest in the 2 fronts, have F2P options and "Gaas" options.

It'll be balanced. Game Pass is crucial to their plans and you need those "smaller" IPs or it'll fail.

Of course they will own an insane amount of known IPs so it's inevitable some of them won't get as much attention if any.

Xbox has tumeni gaemz!

Yes I think their model eases the pressure of smaller studios as they can be successful without selling millions of copies. Heavy hitters alone won't keep Game Pass subs going. And then there is xCloud which will greatly benefit from smaller, story driven games people would play on their mobile devices etc. And if they want to sell more games on Steam and get more PC gamers to subscribe Game Pass they need more variety than games that are big on console. It's somewhat different audience there. 

Also those games OP posted, like Fable and State of Decay, are very popular games. 

And then there's the fact Zenimax and most likely Activision will be operating independently from Xbox division. We'll see how that plays out.

Yep, Halo Infinite going f2p confused me as well. Perhaps there still is some tug of war going on at the top level. Maybe MS is just trying to put their eggs in all the baskets and see what works best.

It will be hard to get mobile phone users enrolled in a subscription model, but there are some ways. First as you said, seamlessly being able to continue at home on your tv is a big advantage. Plus the removal of all ads with a subscription and having access to a library of games that hasn't been on mobile phones before.

Anyway, you don't spend 69 billion to try to get some CoD players over to gamepass. Gamepass growth has not been hitting targets and just a percentage of the 6 billion smartphone market can provide some real growth.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/10/20/microsoft-missed-its-xbox-game-pass-targets-heres-why/?sh=97cd61040274
https://www.shacknews.com/article/128384/xbox-game-pass-misses-growth-goal-after-hitting-25-million-subscribers

Gamepass on console and PC couldn't have more going for it atm. The big games are out, people are stuck home again with the ongoing pandemic, Sony can't make more PS5 and has actually had to reduce production. The deals on GP have all reset and are as low as ever. (got my second $1 deal, this time for 3 months)

The mobile sector is the current/next target. Not enough growth nor revenue in the console/PC space.

Just remember Microsoft is more than just Xbox.
They are fighting on the mobile front against the likes of Tencent, fighting the PC front against Steam, fighting the console front against Sony.

They are in 3 markets and want to push gamepass out to everything... And in order to appeal to $3 billion people, you need those small IP's.