(06-09-2024, 06:57 PM)Nintex wrote: And honestly it's still kind of dissapointing how many franchises just remain dead in the hands of Microsoft.I mean, there's not exactly enough development houses to use them. Until they bought Activision they weren't exactly buying franchise houses, Bethesda looked like one but it had teams like Arkane that do stuff new all the time or ones that were already three games deep into a franchise so likely to transition soon. Especially since they're going to want AAA games out of all of these.
Microsoft's been burned too many times trying to outsource development to outside teams just to try and produce titles, look at all the outright slop they published for the original Xbox for example. Or how bad this went around the One's launch. Don't forget the money they threw down the Kinect hole.
The one benefit of GamePass has been that they have a financial incentive for publishing non-AAA stuff. But a lot of those "name brand" franchises are going to get fans to expect AAA stuff. Personally, I think they should be looking at churning out lower budget stuff in those franchises more regularly with a big game every so often, something like was done with those Lara Croft side-games. Really, this is what they should have been doing with Halo and Gears with ONE BIG game in that franchise once a cycle. That's what Nintendo does! No need to copy Sony when you have an untouched stable like Microsoft does.
And I mean that regarding Microsoft IPs they've had going way back, not just the ones they've recently acquired. Why has there not been a third Crimson Skies game over the last twenty years? You're telling me you couldn't put that into a deadzone in the schedule and make profit like the last one did?
Then again, look what they've done with Crackdown.