I was not even aware they release any games this year. All those studios and they don't even release anything. I truly do not understand MS.

2022 has definitely been one of Xbox's weakest years ever in terms of first party exclusives, but I think that 2019 was about as bad. Though honestly, the Xbox hasn't had a decent year in terms of first party support since maybe 2016 (Forza Horizon 3, Gears of War Ultimate & 4, Quantum Break, State of Decay, and the Definitive Editions of Halo Wars and Killer Instinct).

Newsflash: games take time to develop. It's not like they sat down and went like: "We won't release anything this year for no reason at all." Most AAA games that their newly acquired studios develop started development not to long ago, got delayed like Starfield or just take forever like TES VI.

It's not that hard to understand.

Forza Horizon 5 is the first party game I played the most. My year was great that being said the ten-year anniversary update could have been better. Still hoping Fiat, Abarth, Lancia and Alfa Romeo cars return eventually also.

All the studios MS has purchased since 2018, not even including Bethesda, have released games, but they were all multiplat and are now working on original games for Xbox. Not to mention 2 of the years since then have been under a pandemic and work from home conditions. And a couple studios have been in the middle of transitioning from a AA studio to AAA. Needless to say AAA games don’t appear out of thin air lol 

 It's been 4 years on some of those. They showed trailer for some a few years ago and yet to release. Nintendo is a much smaller company and still gets the games out. MS has enough developers to outman the NYC Police department. They should have better output than this.

2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022 are all top contenders. Only 2021 was decent and even that's stretching it. 

I've been saying for as long as I've been here that Xbox basically dropped the ball and hasn't picked it up since Kinect. they didn't quite get their footing on the original Xbox, then basically stumble ass-backwards into a solid 2005-2010 mostly due to how bad Sony did with the PS3 launch, then they just sorta floundered for way too long. Kinect had no staying power. the Xbox One launch was disastrous with more Kinect. then halfway through that generation when they gave up on Kinect it was clear they were just riding the wave until Gen 9 started because they already lost Gen 8 (years 2017-2019), but then by some miracle they had literally no exclusives at launch in 2020 on the Series X and only got a few games in 2021 before collapsing again in 2022 when either their games went multiplat within months (Death's Door, Tunic, etc) or were delayed until 2023 (Starfield and Redfall). 

I do think 2023's gonna be their year but hot damn how could any company have this long of a bad streak and still have brand loyalty? I genuinely don't get it. 

Next year's gonna be a hell of a mess, though. All three brands have multiple heavy hitters scheduled. Between just Final Fantasy XVI, Forspoken, Tears of the Kingdom, and Starfield I'm not gonna have a lot of spare time. I genuinely feel that 2023's gonna be a historic year for games for all three brands. I just don't know how any company weathered the storm for so long like Microsoft has. 

Oh, wait. daddy Gates' money is virtually infinite and they can afford to operate at a loss for 20 years without ever going under. 

People love to spout the 'games take time' argument, as if all those 23 studios were only hatched the day Microsoft bought them and weren't working on projects in between. Furthermore, A lot of those companies make smaller or mid-sized games (not every game is Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption or Uncharted), and while games DO take time, there's been a lot of time and no excuses. 

For the first 2-3 years of this drought, I absolutely would agree that games take time. We're on year 6 and we've only had a handful of quality exclusives in that time and of those games more than half of them are either Halo, Gears, or Forza. 

It's just silly that they can maintain so much brand loyalty for this long. 

Read the above comment. There are many different factors to attribute. Its not like the newly acquired studios started making Xbox exclusives day 1 they got acquired. Most were finishing up games already in development or making transition from AA to AAA which takes time. Then of course the pandemic delayed everything.

The Switch is much less powerful which means devs don't need to be as graphically focused. Nintendo can likely get twice as many games made in the same span it takes Sony and MS. This isn't a knock on Nintendo. It works great for them not to put as much emphasis on powerful hardware.

You're math is bad. It's been 4 years since they started acquiring in 2018. Then you forget most of those studios being with them less than 4. 

For someone who hates the console wars, you surely do a lot of it.