I remember when I used to think Frostbite was one of the best gaming engines in the industry, but pretty much every EA game that's not made by DICE, has been in a rough technical state. The games looking graphically fantastic, but there's always technical issues. 

I have no earthly idea, but it's criminal at how underutilized id Tech is these days! Most Xbox studios have now switched to Unreal Engine. Even the Bethesda studios you mentioned. I can't believe the latest iteration of the engine has only been used by 1 game. Doom Eternal. BEAUTIFUL game graphically and ran like butter! I was looking forward to more studios using id Tech, but the opposite is happening. Damn shame how id Tech has gone from being one of the biggest engines in the industry to barely used at all. 

Firefight difficulty options

Timeline: An infographic history of Activision Blizzard

If Connie Booth isn't retiring then Microsoft should toss bags of cash at her, very good at what she does and with how many projects Xbox has in development now I don't think they'll run the risk of hiring too many producers

Might be a non-compete clause on her though.

Thing is i dont think this is Sony. I think this is Insomniac themself. They wouldnt be taking on the work load if they didnt think they could do it imo and some might say maybe they have bite of a bit more than they can chew.

Except all their games in that short time have been well received and have been good games, so just maybe they are a work horse who can handle it??.

I'm actually happy that Matt Botty is now in charge of Zenimax too, the FTC emails shows that is very competitive unlike Pete Hines.

AW2 has one of the most straight forward achievement lists I’ve seen. Rewards you for really playing the game and no bullshit.

The FTC emails really did show a side to Booty which he hasn't shown in public. He is really competitive, almost cut-throat, it was funny to see him swearing in email too, Lol. I know some don't like that personality but I think the balance is important to have someone like that to contrast others, his competitive spirit shows how much he cares as well.

I think he gets more shit than he deserves, he only became Head of XGS around 5 years ago in 2018, Matt had to regrow XGS from basically scratch but had to do that during COVID smashing development schedules too and being unable to actually visit the teams for years so some things went unnoticed. He has to work with over a dozen studios during that chaos and many of them needed quickly staffing up (to move to AAA) whilst retaining their culture. Many had prior commitments that needed to be released first as well. To me, it seems like he has mostly succeeded in doing a lot of that, I rarely see, if any, complaints about Matt Booty from actual XGS employees, I also think his summits are a really good idea.

Under him, XGS won publisher of the year in 2021 and has released multiple 90+ titles and in recent history has been averaging an 80+ critic average per year, Redfall had nothing to do with him and without that, almost all their titles over the past few years have been 70+ critic scoring. The only issue is a lack of AAAs and 2022 but I honestly don't think it would matter who was in charge regarding the lack of AAAs...The investment from Microsoft came too late, it only started around 2017-2018 and like I said a few studios had prior commitments, a few had only recently released something, a few were staffing up for AAA, I don't think any of us can spawn AAA's from thin air, game development, especially AAA, is nowadays a 4-6 year average.

Since 2020.

• Bleeding Edge - 66
• Minecraft Legends - 70
• Battletoads - 73
• Minecraft Dungeons - 74
• As Dusk Falls - 78
• Tell Me Why - 81
• Gears Tactics - 83
• Grounded - 83
• Age of Empires IV - 83
• Forza Motorsport - 84
• Halo Infinite - 86
• Pentiment - 86
• Psychonauts 2 - 89
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps - 90
• Microsoft Flight Simulator - 92
• Forza Horizon 5 - 92

Average of 81.8

I think we need to see Matt Booty about 3 years from now to actually be able to judge his record to a full extent but if the man was hated or anything internally then it's unlikely he would be getting promoted. He seems to have done a good job at keeping the XGS happy. People can blame him for Infinite but fact is Infinite released in a great state, to high reviews and was loved on launch, they screwed the post-launch up but many of 343's issues predate Matt Booty and go all the way back to Halo 5 or prior and if you're going to criticise Matt for Halo Infinite without actually knowing what went down then I can praise him for being the first dude to restructure 343 instead of letting things fester and praise him for the turnaround 343 is now having under Pierre's leadership.