It’s been quite a year for Xbox. Back in January, it was announced that Microsoft is attempting to acquire Activision for a whopping $68.7 billion, and assuming that all goes through, a whole bunch of iconic IPs including Spyro the Dragon, Call of Duty and Crash Bandicoot will belong to Xbox.
Despite all that huge stuff going on behind the scenes though, it’s been a hot minute since Xbox has released a big first-party exclusive title of its own - a fact that boss Phil Spencer has now admitted. As reported by IGN, in an interview with Same Brain on YouTube, Spencer agrees that it’s been “too long”, but there’s plenty to be excited for next year.
Take a look at some juicy gameplay from Starfield below.
“One thing we've definitely heard loud and clear is that it's been too long since we've shipped kind of what people would say is a big first-party game,” he said. “We could have our excuses on Covid and other things, but in the end I know people invest in our platform and they want to have great games.
“We're excited about 2023. We've talked about games that are coming, and those games are tracking well. We’re kind of out of what Covid did to the production schedule,” he continued. “Getting our first real Xbox first-party games out of Bethesda, having them ship with Redfall and Starfield will be a lot of fun.”
Upcoming open-world FPS Redfall and space exploration RPG Starfield were both supposed to release this year, until delays pushed them back into the second half of 2023. This November in particular would have been stacked with exciting releases if not for Starfield’s delay - with the likes of God of War: Ragnarök and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet releasing exclusively on PlayStation and Switch respectively, console wars would have been in full swing. At least it gives us some time to keep on top of everything else before getting sucked into Bethesda’s colossal new universe, though.