Xbox head acknowledges large gap between major first-party game releases

While 2022 initially looked very promising for Xbox, a number of high-profile delays have left a pretty big gap in major first-party releases. Halo Infinite struggled out the gate and with Starfield and Redfall now coming in 2023, there is no major holiday season exclusive this year, a fact that is not lost on Phil Spencer.

Speaking on the Same Brain podcast this week, Phil Spencer touched on the lack of major releases this year during a segment on the future of Xbox. Spencer admits that the team has “definitely heard loud and clear” that it has been “too long” since Xbox launched what would be considered “a big first-party game”.

Of course, the last couple of years hasn't been easy for the industry, with the pandemic and a major shift to work from home and hybrid working schemes causing delays for projects across many studios and publishers. Still, Spencer doesn't want to keep banging on that drum, saying “in the end, I know people invest in our platform and they want to have great games”.

Spencer did also add that the games Microsoft has announced for 2023 are “tracking well” and that pandemic-related production issues have been ironed out at this point. With that in mind, we'll be keeping our fingers crossed for Starfield to meet its first half of 2023 release window.

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KitGuru Says: Xbox has had some smaller exclusives this year, but we are still waiting for Microsoft's acquisition spree to really bear fruit. Hopefully, from 2023 onward, we start to see more major games released on a more regular basis. 

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