That’s Booty on the far left (Pictures: AP Images for Xbox)
The head of Xbox’s first party studio has said that the games drought is over and there are more games that haven’t been announced yet.
Although the Xbox Games Showcase was a triumph all round for Microsoft, it’s certain to do particular wonders for Matt Booty, the executive in charge of Xbox Game Studios, as his star rises both within Microsoft and as someone Xbox fans are going to be seeing a lot more of in the future.
Along with Xbox boss Phil Spencer, Bethesda boss Todd Howard, and Sarah Bond (CVP of Game Creator Experiences and Ecosystem – and no, we have no idea what that means) he attended a short, behind closed doors Q&A session after the games showcase, which only press were allowed to attend. Except Microsoft provided all the questions and nobody else got to ask them anything.
It was largely as pointless as it sounds, but there were some interesting comments from Booty, who reiterated his plan to release one game per quarter every year, from 2024 onwards, and claimed that he had ‘other new’ games to reveal after the showcase.
We’re sure he didn’t mean directly afterwards, just sometime in the future, but he said he was ‘feeling pretty good’ about the current state of Xbox first party development, which he claims has ‘turned the corner’ with the release of this year’s Forza Motorsport and Starfield.
He admitted that the Xbox line-up ‘had some gaps last year’, which is putting things mildly, but praised this year’s Hi-Fi Rush, Minecraft Legends, and Age Of Empires on console – the latter of which Spencer gave a whoop of approve to.
‘We’ve already got such big communities around our service games, games like Minecraft games, like Elder Scrolls, Flight Simulator,’ said Booty. ‘In the last five years, we have shipped 10 games that have over 10 million players life-to-date each.’
‘So we’ve got 10 games that have built communities of up to 10 million people and when you add that up across Bethesda, across Xbox Games Studios, we’ve got over 100 and 50 million monthly players, so 100 and 50 million across first party.’
This was part of an attempt by Phil Spencer to downplay the idea that the Xbox 360 was the golden era for Xbox, as he pointed out that twice the number of people now play on Xbox consoles as during that era.
That may be true but there’s no getting around the fact that the Xbox 360 had a far great hold on gamers’ mindshare, to the point where that period is commonly referred to as the Xbox 360 era, rather than the PlayStation 3 era.
It seems unlikely that will happen with the Xbox Series X/S but if the Xbox Games Showcase does prove to be a milestone moment perhaps there’s still a chance…
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The head of Xbox’s first party studio has said that the games drought is over and there are more games that haven’t been announced yet.