I played a decent amount of HellBlade 2 and I have to say it's definitely one accomplished looking game. Since I went in the game believing the combat is there more to progress the story instead of how it's done in most games of this type, I am having a much better time playing the game. In other words, I am enjoying HellBlade 2 for what it is trying to accomplish instead of coming into the game hoping it be MS next GOD of War. Now saying this, man would I love for this game engine and those graphics to be used for a hardcore fighting game because NT has some of the most realistic and gorgeous environments to date but I can accept what HellBlade 2 is and enjoy the experience. If the rumors are true MS has already green lit their next game, I hope they can have that ready by the time MS comes out with their next hardware because if they can raise the bar on HellBlade 2 graphics to hit when the next system comes out, that would be a great start.

I doubt it, I think it's more like MS is going to ensure maximum compatibility in hope to expand their market through 3rd party device. For Xbox Themselves I think they would like to keep development streamlined as much as possible to keep dev cost under control, 100% retro-compatibility and also a long forward-compatible period for current gen through next gen (Even longer than the 2 years given to 8th gen, for GamePass subs retention reason).

I love ARGs even if I don't care for the game.

Really hyped for this. I stopped playing CoD besides the Black Ops games. The last few ones have been so boring that I've been going back to play Black Ops Cold War and Black Ops 4.

The difference of effectiveness between Activision advertisement and that from Xbox studios easily explained in a short CoD teaser.

No kidding. If there was one thing I was hoping Activision would've taken over from Xbox, it would've been marketing lol

I haven't seen a hellblade II advertisement yet,  getting a ton for paper mario at the moment.

Edit my last purchases:

Cats in london (saw Barozi playing it and it was on sale)
Kings ball adventure
Bulletstorm
Sparkle2
Sega megadrive collection
Alba a wildlife adventure

Tbf...Activision has like 3-4 franchises to market and multiple of them are billion dollar franchises

Hellblade's is an art-house project, its marketing could be better but marketing will only take it so far. But there's also very few XGS IP that would justify marketing spending even close to one of the biggest IPs of all time (COD). All they've posted so far though is an ARG video on a website, nothing Halo hasn't done before and Halo's ARGs were better (so far)...