praying for HCS buffalo

Pretty sure it would be priced at $70 if it were a 20 hour game. I personally don't mind it. Too many games go for too many hours. Plus, this just means the presentation will blow the first game out of the water with much more minute attention to detail. 

Displaying choice and consequence as a key design element of Avowed is a good start. Everything else would definitely need a Direct to fully show off. 

It is slightly annoying that Xbox missed Q1 again, Lmao. It's like they are allergic to it. But on the other hand, I'm going to be busy with Infinite Wealth and Dragon's Dogma 2 so I don't care much, it's just repeating the "one major title every quarter" and them always missing Q1 is a bit shooting themselves in the foot. But at least we have Hellblade II for Q2 and Q3/Q4 looks fucking ridiculously stacked between Indiana Jones, Avowed, Call of Duty, Towerborne, Flight Simulator 24 and if anything else makes it but you could probably do Towerborne/Flight Sim in September, Avowed in October, Indiana Jones and COD in November. Flight Sim could be earlier, it may be something they decide doesn't really need major advertising and just drop it randomly, Lol.

Just drop the dang ABK backlog into Game Pass in March, at least that'll be something big for Q1, Lol. 

The issue is you can't really talk about all of that in depth in a 10 minute video, Lol.

I believe some of that stuff has already been confirmed in interviews though.

Also folks from Obsidian will be joining Cohh, ItMeJP and Zeke on Dropped Frames to talk Avowed "sometime soon"

I'm fine with Hellblade's length too, I thought Hellblade I was great, a very immersive experience, I never expected Hellblade II to be a huge 20+ hour experience and instead for it to be...Hellblade, the game I enjoyed, not chasing after something it isn't but instead a very focused and intimate experience with an incredible attention to detail with hopefully improved feeling combat (love the grittiness) and better puzzles but a focused story on Senua's battles, not her, as the developer said, being a superhero, Lol. It's cause of that it will be a shortish intimate narrative and play to its strengths.

If it's not an RPG or open world title it doesn't really need to be 20+ hours long, Lol. In fact, a lot of the greats are only 8-12 hours long.

Last Year Results

Yeah, they definitely need to finally get these release pacing issues in check in 2025. 2024 is looking like a single game in the first half of the year, and then 6 or more probably in the 2nd half of the year. That is far from ideal. For one thing Gamepass needs content spread out more to help keep people subbed. Secondly, releasing like 7 games in 6 months can lead to the smaller games getting lost in the fray and not played as much as they deserve to be played. 

I kind of hope they do end up delaying a few of the games that were possibly going to make late 2024 such as Contraband and Oblivion Remaster and maybe even Horizon 6 into first half 2025 just so that 2025 won't have the same release pacing problems as 2024. The 2nd half of 2025 is already likely to be pretty crowded with games like Clockwork Revolution, South of Midnight, Fable, Perfect Dark, and maybe even id's next game (March 2020-late 2025 is 5 and a half years development time on their next game), so would be better to release games like Contraband, Forza Horizon 6, or Oblivion Remaster in first half 2025, rather than trying to stuff them into an already busy 2nd half 2024. 

Could end up being some of the games expected for 2025 could be pushed to 2026 and Xbox would have more than enough games for the 1 AAA game per quarter lined up from there on out. 

I'm sure no developer would mind having some extra development time lol

The non-committal "2024" is a dead giveaway that Indy will be next year.