Microsoft has “moved on” from Xbox One
Microsoft’s first-party studios will no longer develop any new Xbox One games and have “moved on to Gen 9” according to Xbox Game Studios’ head Matt Booty in a conversation with Axios. The move was already quite apparent at the recent Xbox Games Showcase, where no newly-shown first-party titles were announced to run on the last-gen console natively. Going forward, new titles will only be available through cloud streaming on the older hardware.
Booty said that no internal teams are working on games for Xbox One anymore and have fully transitioned to working for titles on Xbox Series X|S. The only exception are studios working on supporting existing games like Minecraft and Sea of Thieves, which are hugely popular.
He touched on another topic as well, which concerns the development cycles of modern video games: “They’re four and five and six years.” Booty said that this comes down to a much higher technical complexity as well as higher expectations from players, necessitating more time spent on each game. It’s a factor many players, who are still used to previous cycles of something like three years for a triple-A-game, seem to underestimate.
Outlining Microsoft’s philosophy when it comes to (not) interfering with the company’s studios, Booty confirmed an approach “somewhere in the middle.” Recent reveals about Redfall have shown that some members of Arkane Austin had actually hoped for Microsoft to step in and cancel the project when it took over its parent company, but to no avail.
With Microsoft being regarded as the big winner of Not-E3 2023 and finally having something to show for big titles like Forza Motorsport, Fable, and Starfield, this latest showcase seems like a turnaround for the oft-criticized company.
