https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/634536048fa8f5153767e533/MSFT.ABK_phase_1_decision_-_1.09.2022.pdf

pretty long but revolve almost entirely around CoD and Sony.

funny fact about the decision

• Consumer is mentioned 14 times
• Sony is mentioned 70 times
• Call of Duty also abbreviated as CoD is mentioned 156 times

Yeah, they have definitely got to step it up next year, another year like 2022 can never happen again for Xbox.

My reasonable expectations 2023 Xbox line-up:

Exclusives

• January- Age of Empires 2 DE Xbox Ports
• February- Ara: History Untold
• April- Redfall
• May- Starfield
• July- Age of Empire 4 Xbox Port
• August- Project Belfry (has been in development since Summer 2018)
• September- Forza Motorsport
• October- Project Mara (has been in development since late 2019 and is supposedly a very short couple of hour game)
• November- Avowed or Hellblade 2 (one of which has been in development since 2018 and the other since 2019)
• December- Contraband (has been in development since late 2018 I believe)

Day One Gamepass (first party multiplats in addition to day one Gamepass deals already announced for 2023 in normal text, and day one Gamepass deals I would like to see them make in 2023 in bold, release months are speculation on some of these)

• January- Persona 3 and 4, Monster Hunter Rise
• February- Atomic Heart, Party Animals
• March- Ghostwire Tokyo, Wo Long, Amnesia: The Bunker
• April- BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, Hollow Knight: Silksong
• May- Valheim, Minecraft Legends, Guilty Gear Strive, Star Trek Resurgence
• June- Diablo 4, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn
• July- Eiyuden Chronicles: 100 Heroes
• August- Lies of P, Ravenlock
• September- The first in a day one Gamepass collection of one of the missing JP franchises like Ys, Legend of Heroes, or Atelier, announced at TGS
• October- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Wolf Among Us 2
• November- Trials of Mana Remake announced at TGS
• December- Ark 2

I have nothing too outlandish there, everything I listed should be doable.

That is pretty reasonable expectations, but I wouldn't put Ara: History Untold in February. I think it's going to be further out closer to Summer just based on the fact that their 2nd technical alpha won't happen till January. 

Fair point. All I could find was their original stated release window of 1st half 2023, but didn't realize they are still on Alpha stage. Probably more like April then, not a genre that would conflict with Redfall so should be safe there. 

Has Diablo 4 been confirmed to release day one into Gamepass? I would think they wouldn't even need the deal to go by for this. I'll pick it up regardless as I loved 3.

If the deal goes through, it will, they said that all games from Blizz/Act will be in GP.

Also, the leak we saw few days ago with the June 6th date was on Windows Store. Which points to them working toward that.

It has not. But Phil should just tell Bobby that some aspect of the $70 billion being spent should cover any costs or loss of sale revenue from bringing Diablo 4 to Game Pass at launch

For the most part that's true, but not a guarantee. There still are games on the Windows Store that are not part of Game Pass. Like CoD: Infinite Warefare is on there for example.

MS still pushes games that are included on Game Pass but you can still dig through to find games that aren't on the service.

It's funny to think that by FTC claiming that Xbox and PlayStation are in their own specific market, it not only puts Switch in a monopoly position in its own made up market but also says that last gen in this market of two consoles, PlayStation owned 70% of the hardware market whilst Xbox owned 30%, Lol.