To be fair, Xbox hasn't really released too many stinkers recently. Redfall sure, but it wasn't an Xbox game to begin with (greenlit by Zenimax like 3 years before the acquisition was announced), and cancelling it wouldn't have been the right move at all, to Zenimax employees it would have looked like Xbox was being tyrannical after they had promised Zenimax a high degree of freedom during acquisition talks, even as it is some at Zenimax were questioning Xbox, some of which came out during the ABK trial. Such a move so soon after the acquisition could have triggered mass turnover at Zenimax studios, developers leaving for job offers elsewhere. Instead of cancelling it, Xbox would have been better off delaying it and investing more resources into the game to turn it into a proper co-op looter shooter, bringing in a 2nd studio with more looter shooter experience to co-develop the game with Arkane Austin, instead they kept completely hands off and just let the game release to poor reviews just so that they could get Arkane Austin onto their next game sooner (please let it be Dishonored 3).

The last stinker from an Xbox first party studio before Redfall was Bleeding Edge in 2020, and I personally don't think it was a stinker even if the critics didn't like it, many of us here in Xbox Empire played it and enjoyed it, myself included. The issue wasn't the game itself, the game had a solid foundation, the issue is that Xbox rushed it out with too little content because they wanted Ninja Theory staff on Hellblade 2 and Project Mara instead, Xbox's failing wasn't that they should have cancelled it, as cancelling a passion project game by a small team is never a good idea, rather they should have taken the reigns somewhat and convinced the game director that they needed to expand the dev team working on the game, Xbox knew that a 25 person team wasn't enough to keep up the steady flow of post-release content that a multiplayer game requires to keep gamers playing, they instead allowed Ninja Theory to maintain complete creative control and keep the dev team on the game at 25 people even though the small dev team was a death sentence for the game.

Before Bleeding Edge, the last first party Xbox game to get poor reviews was Crackdown 3. Again, I don't think cancellation would have been the right call there. Xbox One had barely any exclusives as it was, they couldn't afford to go around cancelling them willy nilly. Least of all was Crackdown 3, a carrot that Xbox had been dangling from the end of a stick the entire generation, the backlash from cancelling it would have made the Scalebound cancellation backlash seem tame by comparison.

Lmaooo.

How does that mode work exactly, do you need a gen 8 guitar controller from the PS4/XB1 Rock Band or Guitar Hero games or the adaptor they sold to attach the gen 7 guitar controllers to gen 8/9 USB ports, or do you simply play with your normal Xbox/PS controller?

I don't have a clue, Fortnite is crazy, just merging everything into the game now, Lol.

If this Rockband game mode for Fortnite does well at all, it should definitely be enough to convince Xbox to revive Guitar Hero somewhere within Activision. I'd love to see it personally.

I think it would be beneficial for Microsoft to get away from PlayStation's release schedule.

Honestly would be wild if all 3 had a different release schedule, Lol.

Jez has a point, I wonder if all this lends itself to Xbox doing quicker upgrades.

This is part of why I think that the AMD leaker might be right. He knows the AMD databases well, and if he says that the Xbox Next chipset will be ready for a console releasing in 2026 I have no reason to doubt him. Wouldn't really make sense for Xbox to hold back a chipset that AMD completed in 2025 or 2026 all the way until the 2028 from their ABK roadmap for the next Xbox console. 

Why hold back a completed chipset for 2-3 years to release it in 2028 when said chipset will be pretty outdated tech by then? It would only make sense for Xbox to extend the generation if Xbox Series was selling well, but it's not, all signs point to Xbox Series falling behind Xbox One launch aligned this Holiday season. Sure the chipset could be for a Pro console, but Phil seemed against the idea just earlier this year, he was calling Series X their Pro console and Series S their consumer console just months ago, it just wouldn't really make sense for them to support, S, X, and X Pro all at once. 

The other possibilities I see is that Xbox could finally be adapting the long speculated smartphone hardware model for Xbox, where something like this happens:

• 2020- Xbox Series S and X release
• 2025/2026- Xbox Series S2 and X2 release, while S and X are rebranded as S1 and X1, S1 and X1 support for most games continues
• 2029/2030- Xbox Series S3 and X3 release, S1 and X1 game support ends, S2 and X2 game support continues

And so on and so forth, with Xbox always supporting 2 half-gens at once with game support. Alternatively they could just drop S and have each numbered Xbox Series be a single model, meaning that Series 2 would effectively be X Pro, while Series 3 would release around the same time as PS6 a few years later to compete with it, while Series 2 game support continues for a further few years.

I'm not a full believer in Team2026 yet but...

• Switch 2 - 2024
• Xbox Series 2 - 2026
• PS6 - 2028

That'd make some hype years