Yeah, I think gaming studios in the US and Canada made a big mistake putting their studios in or near high cost of living cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto. The fact that so many western AAA cities are congregated in those cities are a big part of the balooning AAA budget problem. I mean look at this map of the highest and lowest cost of living large cities in the US:

I can't think of a Single AAA developer (or even AA for that matter) that is headquartered in one of those 10 lowest cost of living cities, meanwhile out of the 10 highest cost of living cities there I know of game studios in San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Bethesda, and New York City. 

Like you said, Japan has managed to keep their budgets much more in check, and part of that is because the cost of living and therefore developer pay is lower over there. Alan Wake 2 and Lords of the Fallen last year are two other examples, Remedy is in low cost of living Espoo Finland, which according to this page has  has 25% lower non-rent cost of living than New York City and 72% lower rent than NYC. I'm sure that is a big part of why Remedy were able to develop Alan Wake 2 for just €50m (plus €20m marketing), it was the one of the most expensive productions ever in Finland, but compared to most US and Canada AAA games it's budget wasn't even half of what they spend. Lords of the Fallen meanwhile was made by Hexworks last year for $66m USD in combined development, marketing, and physical edition production costs, a really low number compared to most US and Canada produced video games. Hexworks is headquartered in 2 cities, Barcelona Spain and Bucharest Romania, which as you can see here and here, both cities have way lower cost of living than NYC.

Grounded, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush.

WHERE'S THE BIG GAME, TOM?!

Aside from the usual sugar-coated PR of "more players and community is always good".

They still went on to not name the 4 games announced for other platforms, without naming them too.

Starfield and Indiana Jones not coming on PS5 "for now". Which is basically part of a slow but deliberate release strategy I think. That last part shouldn't have been left open like they just did though cuz you know speculation will now endlessly continue.

Diablo IV is coming to Gamepass on March 28th, which is weird for it being the only Activision Blizzard game so far on the Gamepass but it is currently mostly a "dead game" with some of the shittiest monetizations for a premium game so I guess they hope to make good money from those interested in.

They're working on hardware, and possibility of looking into different form of devices ... Like every console manufacturer as usual. Therefore, to announce that they're.making in the foreseeable future.

Conclusion : Xbox is not dead


At first it doesn't seem much really, but it's pretty bigger than a simple nothing burger.

Hopefully he's wrong about $100 games next generation as well.

Now hopefully a few Xbots can stop PMing me about abandoning Xbox