Microsoft
With the way Sea of Thieves limped to the finish line in March, Microsoft’s projections for 2018 looked a bit more dire than anticipated, and that trend has unfortunately continued into Q2, as State of Decay 2 failed to impress.
Team green received a lot of excellent titles this quarter, with the long-awaited NieR: Automata feeling right at home on the Xbox One X, but strip away multi-platform releases and Sony’s sloppy seconds, and the catalogue is left threadbare. STAY was unique and showed great potential, but made too many mistakes that lamentably mitigated its strengths, while oOo: Ascension was just kind of… there. Honestly, you have to dig deep to find any console exclusives for Microsoft, let alone decent ones.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, with an E3 showing that was dedicated to bringing out some of their big guns; namely, Halo, Gears of War and Forza. To help bolster that, Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Cuphead’s Delicious Last Course DLC are almost surefire hits for 2019.
That is exactly the approach that Microsoft needs to take moving forward, but by then, they’ll have the likes of The Last of Us Part II, Death Stranding, Smash Bros. Ultimate, Spider-Man, Fire Emblem, and countless others to deal with.
