Yeah. Exploration was always the strong point of Bethesda games... I mean, I can't remember how many times I 'restarted' Morrowind when that first came out... Just so I can try new characters, abilities and stat boosts and explore the land.
Was incredible at the time.

But Morrowind was also pushing technology... And I mean, really pushing technology.

Bethesda actually had to abuse a bug to essentially force the original Xbox to reboot and clear it's memory while loading new areas, otherwise the game would have been impossible to run on the hardware.
Massive open world on 6th gen with full pixel and vertex shader 1.4 water, dense foliage and some good TnL effects was pretty 'out of nowhere' at the time.

Likewise Oblivion was also a technology pusher with it's massive draw distances and improved shader and framebuffer effects.

Starfield just isn't the big leap technologically from Fallout that we should expect, especially in the character and animation aspects, it's still very raw and clunky like in Morrowind that released many decades ago.

Yeah. Talking squirrel wielding guns = Rocket raccoon.

CD Project Red has done a fantastic job turning Cyberpunk around. It's actually a good game now that hardware has helped catch us up.

But... Starfield and Cyberpunk is like comparing chalk and cheese, they are different genre's.
The only commonality they have is that they are open world RPG titles.

We would be better off comparing Starfield to another like-for-like title such as No Mans Land, Outer Worlds, Elite Dangerous, Everspace etc'.

Bethesda interacting with NPCs is the most boring thing in the world. They have not changed their presentation in 30 years. Staring at an unmoving NPC smackdab the middle of the face as they blabber some exposition. Sure it worked and made sense in 1996 but in 2023 what the fucking fuck are they doing? I've had this issue with some Japanese games where 2 characters stand next to one another and blabber on for 15 min. Then look at Xenoblade or something and how dynamic it is. It's showing and telling. Normally not one to care about those CP2077 vs Starfeild comparisons but this time yeah. It shows Bethesda has not evolved much at all in 30 years. CP2077 is modern.

Xbox Strategy appears to be:
1) Feed Gamepas
2) Get Gamepas on as many screens as possible.

Micosoft is now pretty much the biggest game developer. But given this strategy, is there any incentive in creating huge budget games that can only be played on high end expensive PC's or top tier consoles?

I don't think so. If there will be a new Xbox coming out, it could well be that power is not going to be prioritized at all, price will.

Even when taking cloud gaming in consideration to reach the maximum of screens. For MS it would be beneficial if these games don't require top levels of power to run, so their back end infrastructure would be more cost efficient per game session.

thoughts?

Theres no denying that Starfield, Xboxs most hyped game of this generation was a huge letdown for Bethesda and Microsoft. There is no way they are happy with how its gone, Its mostly self inflicted though, it just feels dated compared to what others are doing, and their Game Engine is just not built for an open World space game. They shouldn't of even attempted it without first overhauling their engine.

Literally this very minute there are more than twice as many people playing Skyrim than Starfield.
How the Hell is that possible, the game of more than a decade ago is more popular than the shiny new thing
I'm guessing theres not going to be a Starfield 2

Theres no point starting the generation early, Unless they replace top management, for Microsoft will just keep making basic errors.

Look at that terrible Halo release trailer from a couple of years ago, There is no way someone in management at Sony or Nintendo would of looked at that and said, Yep thats good, show that as the Face of Xbox's biggest IP, though now Halo has become so devalued maybe not even in the top 5 now. They need a complete overhaul of Xbox management

What's wrong with having high expectations for Xbox's biggest 1st party releases this gen? Should nobody have expectations for ES, Fable, and Blade now? Lol Halo and Forza Horizon are system sellers and caused a jump in GP subs so they pretty much lived up to expectations. Starfield was one of the most hyped new games of this gen so of course there were expectations. I've never seen so much port begging and butt hurt from a certain group in probably my entire time of gaming lol. Just because Bethesda didn't knock it out of the park, doesn't mean expectations were wrong. Same goes for people expecting XBox hardware to increase in 2023, or at least break even. 2023 was easily a better year in software for Xbox compared to 2022. The fact it sold as poorly as it did is surprising. When looking back at it, Xbox was not nearly aggressive enough with sales, deals, and bundles this year. The fact Xbox didn't even release a console bundle for Forza or Starfield is a head scratching decision. The increased hardware prices really didn't help either. 

I never said the Cod deal was the cause of ps3 struggles lol. I said, those Cod deals helped Xbox sales and they did. Xbox was the go-to platform for the majority of CoD players during the 7th gen. To say, Xbox getting CoD marketing going forward won't have any positive effect on Xbox hardware is straight denial.  

I know I said I wouldn't post in this thread again, but I had to correct the inaccuracy of your reply lol.  

I really don't think that COD marketing will help Xbox. As long as it's still available on Playstation people will just play it there.
In the 7th gen Xbox were actually a viable alternative to Sony thanks to killer exclusives, and had built up an identity as the place to be for shooters. That's not the case any more.

Say what you want but Halo and Starfield underdelivered. Forza did great (given its perceived popularity) but wasn't that big of a system seller. Much of what you write here is irrevelant (the topic is hardware sales) and exaggerated (for instance, Halo and FH5 didn't do much for GamePass either. IIRC GamePass growth was starting to slow down not long before they released. They couldn't stop this).

You overestimated these games yourself in a discussion with me. You claimed that Xbox will have two big system sellers coming before Sony releases their first (completely ignoring Miles Morales!), thinking it'll help Xbox gain marketshare.

Yes, there is nothing wrong with having high expectations. Just as there is nothing wrong with explaining why some of these expectations were too-positive/unrealistic. But I'm more annoyed by rude and arrogant posts that attack/mock people with literally more reasonable expectations just because they're less positive towards Xbox. You here are misrepresenting my arguments... I didn't say "CoD won't have any positive effect on Xbox hardware" , I meant the marketing/GP CoD impact will be negligible or shortlived. For example, Xbox Series XS's Q4 is looking to decline YoY (over an already terrible 2022 Q4) despite Starfield. That doesn't mean that Starfield had zero impact... it just means that the impact was small enough to call insignificant. It couldn't even offset the decline over an embarrassing Q4 2022 for crying out loud.

"CoD marketing" may be an even smaller factor this late in the generation. I'm pretty sure Xbox One launched with CoD marketing and yet the PS4 crushed it. X360 keeping up with PS3 had little to do with X360 CoD marketing. PS3 was more harmed by CoD simply existing on Xbox, which was easily the superior console in a number of key areas.

You have no idea what my exact expectations for any of these games were so stop saying I had unrealistic expectation. If you're going to talk about expectations, tell me what those exactly are and how they weren't met because my perception of delivering could very well be different from yours.

If you want to keep pretending Xbox didn't benefit from the CoD deals when they had them and won't once they get them again, is a weird hill to die on. Let's look at the facts. Microsoft paid to have marketing rights and so did Sony, right afterwards. Why would they ever do such a thing for so long if it didn't have any positive effects on either brand? Sony fought the ABK deal with CoD being the center piece of their issue. Clearly, Sony and MS understand the benefits of Cod marketing, Why don't you? 

"I didn't say CoD won't have any positive effect on Xbox hardware." No, this is exactly what you said:

"A next-gen version of a multplat CoD would do nothing to a new Xbox. Actually, even a CoD that skips Playstation consoles would not necessarily result in a massive increase to the new Xbox's baseline " You're already backtracking. My entire point was, Xbox consoles and software sales would see a boost and help a next gen console release. Omg, What a crazy take lol. For some reason this bothered you even though there is years of sales data to prove this.

Based on your last sentence about which console was superior and your defense about the ps3, you care more about console wars than any point I was actually making. 

I don't see how ending this generation early is going to help. Xbox is mismanaged and you don't solve this problem by a simple reset.

MS better hang to this gen as long as it can imo and sort out their strategy by next generation, because while they're doing badly, it could've been much worse (PS5 shortages saved them) and they're not ready for a reset, if the point is to sell hardware.

Wtf are you talking about. Don't drop baseless accusations of console warring. Smh. I'm sure you misread it as him saying the PS3 was clearly the superior console when he meant 360 otherwise you wouldn't have an issue.

But regardless of the opinion either way don't just fallback to console wars.