Player 2 takes a look at what Microsoft's first party studios have up their sleeve for 2017.
Frances 'Fracas' Addison: "Season 17 has begun! And some unfamiliar faces have been spied on remote islands as The Smugglers’ League settle in and begin their hunt for high-value, dangerous prizes. They’re open to letting pirate crews help them transport their cargo where it needs to go, and maybe recovering some choice items misplaced along the way. Their true goal, however, remains rather mysterious… but for now, let’s find out what you can expect from this new Season in Sea of Thieves!"
2025 marks the 40th ‘Ruby’ Anniversary of that bold endeavour, and Rare’s inviting everyone to join the celebration of this impressive milestone, offering free gifts, discounts and plenty of swag to claim in their shared-world pirate adventure, Sea of Thieves.
It's a shame it seems pretty Sea of Thieves centric
I was hoping for some cool Banjo / Conker merch or maybe a re-release of Rare Relay with some added games, possibly work something out with Nintendo so they can add Goldeneye to it with online support.
Hideki Kamiya is still interested in developing Scalebound, after the PlatinumGames and Microsoft action game was cancelled back in 2017.
He's been begging for the past three years. That ship has long sailed. Besides, Phil's a fake. When's the last time he delivered on a game the fans asked for? Still waiting on him to greenlight KI4.
@8bit
Yeah I mentioned that below. Although in comparison concord was a bigger failure.
I mean I'm all for it... I'd buy it for PS5 since Xbox is doing these multiplatform releases now
Well, I vastly prefer physical versions of games, and I can't do that with my Series S... sooooooo assume what you will
Scalebound was my reasoning for buying and Xbox one. Legit my biggest let down last gen
Same here. That was going to be the game I'd buy a Xbox One for back in the day. It'd be good if they did revive it and improve on what they had at the time.
Seems odd to be asking for it now that he left Platinum Games. He'll be busy with Okami 2 for a number of years, does he expect to develop the game at Clovers studio now? Would they be picking up where they left off, or starting over again? Any of the previous team members, or just him?
I doubt Phil would fund it again, but if so, then that would be good news, also fund a new Banjo as well as Conker games while you're at it. I miss Conker!
doesn't seem odd at all, he'd want work and that game even though it suffered some bad press with the cancellation and stuff is still something that people want to see (i think)
It will be interesting to see what they do with Rare after Sea of Thieves. Seems like they were slated for Kinect development, but that isn't really in play anymore. Would be nice if they revived some older IP. Other than that, internal development falls into the big three. Gears, Halo, and Forza. Everything else is being farmed out to third parties.
More new/diverse IPs are needed
Nicce
This shows exactly why MS struggles with a global audience.
Most of these are just rumors, but more Halo, Gears, Forza, and Minecraft are pretty much guaranteed. Which is great for those franchises and their fans.
Crackdown 3, Halo Wars 2, State of Decay 2, and possibly Phantom Dust all had solid predecessor that all had modest success (HW sold very well for a console RTS), but that was at a time when Xbox dominated NA, and it's not the case this gen. So while I'm expecting all 4 to be good games (which is the most important thing), I don't see them moving consoles for Xbox.
That leaves Sea of Thieves and Scalebound as the only new AAA exclusives so far for Xbox in 2017. Sea of Thieves seems cool, but it needs a lot more coverage, and while I'm highly anticipating Scalebound because I love Platinum Games...games, I don't think it's going to do anything on Xbox as far as sales go.
Team Xbox closed over 10 studios during the XBO's lifecycle, and that did nothing for their game library.
What they need to do is reach out to as many 2nd and 3rd party developers as they can and start getting more diverse exclusives on their platform. Exclusives are what helped the PS3 out last-gen when it launched with a struggle, and it can also help Xbox. Relying on Halo, Gears, Forza, and 3rd party COD, BF, AC, and Fifa isn't going to help at all.
1. Buy RavenSoft and make your next AAA FPS (COD4 Remastered / Singularity / Quake / Wolfenstein / X-Men Legends / Star Wars Jedi games)
2. Buy and rebuild Studio 38 and make a new WRPG (the developers of Kingdoms of Amalur)
3. Buy Behaviour Interactive (Halo Wars:DE / Warhammer / Doritos:CC / Dante's Inferno PSP / Wet Xbox 360)
4. Try to buy Ryse from CryTech again (they obviously need the money)
5. Hire Valve to develop Left 4 Dead 3
That's what you guys need to start making waves in software.
@Deadriser
I seriously doubt that. Crackdown has never done anything for the Xbox brand. The first game well solid, but sold because it came with the Halo 3 beta. The second game was okay, and lost around 40% of it's audience when Xbox had a significantly larger install base at the time. That's not a good setup, considering the Xbox brand is doing worse than 360 globally (NA is the saving grace, and soon XBO lead will be over).
It really does seem like "Year of the Scorpio" is the last bastion for both MS and its fans. I say that because after Scalebound has just been cancelled (which was their ONLY exclusive RPG), that 4th year lineup is just.... http://sev.h-cdn.co/assets/...