Where the Games At?
A game console lives and dies by the games you can play on it. This has been true from the very beginning, and didn’t change with the advent of the PS4 and Xbox One. Unfortunately, 2017 hasn’t exactly been the greatest for video games and the Xbox One so far. Yes, there have been some good third-party offerings like the amazing Resident Evil 7, but first party games have been virtually non-existent.
If you look over at the other camps, the PS4 has already received a handful of exclusives, including the critically acclaimed Nioh, as well as the same major third-party offerings as Microsoft’s console. The Switch will be coming out of the gate with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, one of the most highly anticipated games of the year. Yet Microsoft started off this year with the cancellation of Scalebound, and assurance that we’ll see some games at some point this year. They just didn’t bother to tell us when.
Halo Wars 2 is the first major exclusive for the platform scheduled for 2017, and that’s but a spin-off of their flagship series. Other than that, fans are left in the dark as most of the exclusive lineup only has a tentative 2017 release window. It’s difficult to sell a console without also selling something to play. And when the only real options are also on platforms that have a strong exclusive schedule, it’s time to consider that perhaps the Xbox One is in a bit of trouble.
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Luckily, Microsoft still has time to pull the Xbox One out of this hole that it’s found itself in. E3 is around the corner, and it’s a chance to inject some much needed new excitement into the equation. The console is still selling, but if it doesn’t start to get some attention, and soon, the problems it’s facing will only grow.
