The more I think about it, the more I honestly think Xbox is totally fucked this gen, moreso than EVER before....And Phil Spencer is 100% to blame. Guy needs to go.
Even the Xbox One had Ryse, Killer Instinct, Titanfall, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Sunset Overdrive, etc....all lined up EARLY in the Xbox One's lifecycle. Halo Infinite was supposed to be the one redeeming factor in next gen, even if it was a cross-gen game. It was supposed to be Microsoft's ace card, their Breath of the Wild that ushers in a ton of excitement for the platform. I got that feeling when watching the 2018 trailer.
What the fuck happened? Phil had the entire Xbox One gen to prepare for next-gen. And then suddenly "oh, gens don't matter". What the fuck is his problem? It's clear that he doesn't GET GAMING. He doesn't understand the ART of making games. And it's clear that he's a guy that originally started his career making generic Microsoft office based products. The problem with Phil is he's a software engineer turned bean counter. Everything about Xbox is centered around the ideas of user engagement, monthly active users, services subscriptions, etc. What he fails to understand, which is SHOCKING given how he was head of game studios for the longest time, is that gaming is built ON GAMES. Brilliant thought, right?
And what about these GAMES? Are they static? Do they never change? No, Generations MAKE THEM BETTER. They get developers EXCITED at the new possibilities. Motivated to make something great where they don't have as many restrictions as they had before. They get GAMERS INTERESTED again when things get stale. Once next gen hits, within 1 year from now a HUGE portion of the very hardcore gamers will have already moved over.
Microsoft is going to get left in the dust by their strategy so far and it's completely unacceptable as a consumer. Sony is going to have an insanely compelling lineup right out of the gate the first year and Xbox is lucky to hopefully salvage Halo from being a total disaster. But it'll still be LAST GEN! It's going to look like SHIT compared to Horizon 2 and will be a joke if it releases alongside it. You can only pull a Breath of the Wild moment if you actually have insane levels of talent behind something. 343 is just a failed studio, plain and simple. Their creative director probably left because Microsoft mandated that Halo Infinite be a platform game that keeps evolving. Nobody wants that. Phil does though, gotta get them MAUs!
So here we are, months away from a 12TF console, that won't have anything on it that looks any better than the Xbox One X for probably a few years. There's ZERO reason to buy an Xbox Series X. Sony is going to CLOBBER them. It's going to be shocking how badly Microsoft is going to do next-gen.
