TBH I didn't include Bethesda cause I think it's a bit early to blame any Bethesda problems on Xbox management. But yeah... also Forza Motorsport was announced in June 2020, didn't include it cause it's not "TBA" but that'll be over 3 years from announcement to release.

They just didn't have anything ready for the Xbox Series for whatever reason and so had to splurt out a bunch of announcements far too early to try and get interest in their new console. Don't think I've really seen anything like it. Sure other companies announce stuff way too early too but it's not usually basically your entire line-up of games.

343 is a prime example that MS being hands off doesn’t work.

Yeah. A big part of the problem is that Xbox let their first party get too small under Mattrick's poor vision from 2007-2014, and then those early Phil years where he had to close 1st party studios that were struggling like Lionhead, Team Dakota, and Press Play, and then Twisted Pixel asked to be allowed to go independent and Phil allowed it, so by the end of 2017, Xbox's 1st party had shrunk to just 5 studios (343, Coalition, Rare, Turn 10, and Mojang). Phil just didn't have the budget to expand until he convinced Satya to give him more budget in 2018. Then the studios they acquired since 2018 had other projects they had to finish before they could start working on their first Xbox exclusive. inXile had to finish up Wasteland 3, Compulsion had to finish up We Happy Few DLC, Arkane Lyon and Tango had to finish up Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo, Double Fine had to finish Psychonauts 2, Obsidian had to finish up The Outer Worlds and it's DLC, Ninja Theory had to finish up their work on 3 different VR games.

Meanwhile Xbox's 2nd party division dropped the ball hard in the latter half of last gen by making very few AAA deals like we had got in the first half with Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break, and Ryse, pretty much all of their 2nd party deals after that were small fry, Battletoads, As Dusk Falls, Tell Me Why, ReCore, etc. Xbox should have had the foresight to make some huge AAA 2nd party deals to compensate for their lacking 1st party in the first half of this generation, but they didn't do that early enough, so the first AAA from 2nd party this gen, Contraband, will come just as late as most of their 1st party games will. 

On top of that we had developmental struggles at 343 on Halo Infinite, Rare on Everwild, Undead Labs on SoD 3, Obsidian on Avowed, The Initiative on Perfect Dark, and also some issues at Playground with Fable. Meanwhile over at Bethesda in the years before Xbox acquired them, BGS was failing to reorganize in the way they needed to reorganized to handle working on 3 huge IP at once (Starfield, Elder Scrolls, and Fallout), while Starfield also had some development issues behind the scenes. Seems like Machine cancelled or put Wolfenstein 3 on hold to focus on Indiana Jones only in late 2020. Just so many issues across both Xbox and Bethesda studios. It's going to take the rest of this gen to get the first party into the state it needs to be in at the rate things are going.

So because of all of the above, Xbox was forced to announce loads of 2024-2026 games with CGI teasers on their shows from 2019-2022, just to have enough announcements to build up any hype at all for Xbox Series. 

The thing is none of you really know exactly what Hands off or hands on means.  What I mean by this is that I see a lot of speculation but for all we know, Phil has been very involved.  Basically you have to work with what you got especially when it comes to development.  If projects were not ready, the wose case scnerio is to release it and it bombs.  You rather take the delay and fix the issues or at least make sure you come out with a solid product.  For all we know, it was Phil decision to delay everything because the polish level was not there.  Some studios adapt really well to COVID office restrictions and some do not, its a case by case scenerio depending on the structure of each studio.

At the end of the day, Sony have better seasoned studios and it shows.  A lot of situations you cannot just right the ship right away, you need key people in order to make it happen.  Time is never on the side of any company trying to play catch up.

Arkane taking shots at 343

Just going to chime in about the numbers Welfare has been reporting on. That is from Walmart, which shows daily sales of 100+, 500+, and 1,000+. If a console sells 499 units in a day it will show as 100+. Xbox sales haven't been good (at least at Walmart), but they might not be as quite as bad as it looks. Mind you Xbox Series X stock has been awful. 

Sea of Thieves will be eternal! @ice 

Yeah and this is why Starfield release in April would have been great. Advertisement wise/community wise they are also doing a bad job. 

Bethesda seem to be a great catch by Microsoft. They have 3 titles releasing/released in 2023. They fairly consistently release games almost every year. Now they just need other studios to start releasing at a more consistent rate and they'll be great.
They really need to focus on ending this gen in a strong position and keep that going into the next.

One thing I've been reading a lot about the Diablo IV beta is how snappy the game is. The combat, loading screens, and menus are all just snappy.

Blizzard was known for what we called, "Blizzard polish" and how far we've come to the point where a game of theirs works like the way their old games used to, and we're all genuinely surprised by it lol.