1/3 (almost 5000 employees) taken by a studio that hasn't released a new game in 6 years. What the hell are they working on? The second coming of Jesus?

Most of what's announced or rumored, we haven't see any gameplay for or it's a codename for an unannounced title. Can't really say for certain if their quality or not. Now if you said, I can't get excited for a bunch of games we haven't seen much of or anything, then I would agree with you. 

You should give Forza Horizon 5 a go. Certainly not bland and there is a reason it's won multiple GOTY awards which is unprecedented for a racing game.

Btw, Bandi Namco is rumored to be working on Killer Instinct so take that as you will. 

Buggy? Yes. Crap? No.

Morrowind back in 2002 was absolutely amazing, playing that on the old Geforce 4 Ti with pixel shader effects? You were on the cutting edge.

Fallout 3 and New Vegas were solid games in their own right, some good story telling.

Sorry you didn't enjoy them, but -millions- of other gamers did and still do.

Personal choice, doesn't stop it from being an amazing franchise loved by 10's of millions of gamers.

Sorry you couldn't get into it, some fantastic story telling to be had.

Doom did start before 2016, same with Wolfenstein, they have history.
Sadly the Switch ports were a massive downgrade, but the best place to play them is definitely PC.

Still a fun romp.
Gears 5 technicals made it a showstopper, VanQuish is also a solid game, but it's old and outdated now, having released in 2010.
The remaster cleans it up, but still can't hold a candle to newer games.

Splatoon is great fun.

I think you are in the mindset of not enjoying the actual game, but comparing a game to another game, which destroys any enjoyment you might get by telling yourself "I could be playing this instead".

Mario Kart 8 on Switch though is just a re-release of an old game... It's 10 year Birthday is only a couple years away.
It's also technically not in the same genre as Forza.

If Forza isn't for you, that's fine, but it's hitting some very big industry highs at the moment and shifted millions of copies with endless praise, it's a quality title which is why it's industry renowned at the moment, it looks amazing, it plays great.
Sorry you can't enjoy an amazing game.

I would actually like to see a return of "Blur" I thoroughly enjoyed that game from Activision.

I agree the Season model for Killer Instinct was convoluted and confusion.
But if you buy the complete game, it's probably one of the best fighters out there, it's very polished and fun.

JRPG's need more support on Xbox, it's one of the big reasons why I own a Switch and Playstation 5.

Jet Set got a "spiritual successor" with sunset overdrive, if you enjoyed Jet Set, give that game a chance.

Don't forget you also have titles like Fable, Ori, Sea of Thieves, State of Decay, Flight Simulator.

Xbox, Playstation and PC aren't lacking games, be a little more open minded and a little less critical and you might start to enjoy the differences they bring to the table... Would be a terrible industry if everything was carbon copies of each other...

they have acquired a lot of studios bu the main JOB now is to Manage them and produce good IP which MS has seemed to be lacking in the past.

It will take 3-5 years but they could start to challenge Sony's High Quality IP's.


lets see what Sony does to keep its competitiveness

Gamepass in 5 to 10 years is gonna be pretty ridiculous when you look at what they already have, nevermind whatever else they're looking into buying.

Obsidian, InXile and DoubleFine were great companies before they were part of Microsoft. Now that they can keep their funding more stable under Microsoft and keep staff even between projects, they may be doing even better. I very much look forward to all the unannounced projects in their column.

Activision looks just sad though. So many dev studios, and all doing Call of Duty. I hope MS changes that and diversifies their output.