Fable shows that Xbox has gotten serious about AAA quality, and I think this could end up being the new normal for Xbox Game Studios.
I don't think it's any secret that over the past decade, Xbox has had a bit of a games problem. Looking back to the past, we have examples like Recore, Redfall, Crackdown 4, among others that had solid concepts but failed to hit the expected quality bar. Times are changing, though.
For whatever reason, games that are heavy on story content, or "game of the year contender" type depth has eluded Xbox for an incredibly long time.
In recent years, thanks to studios like Obsidian, Rare, The Coalition, Bethesda, and other studios, Microsoft has delivered a strong and consistent cadence of high-quality games — but they've rarely been considered for the biggest accolades the industry has to offer. I've argued in the past that games like Forza Horizon should've at least been nominated, but it stands to reason that those deciding these awards feel more connected with character-driven experiences. Content from Xbox rival platforms like PlayStation's God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, and Death Stranding soak up a lot of the attention, while Nintendo's "fun" gameplay systems-first experiences like Mario and Donkey Kong win on the other end.
My perception is that Xbox's games typically straddle this middle "AA" ground. Gears of War 4 and 5 had some great story telling and decent combat, but arguably lacked the depth of similar titles in the same vein. Gears of War 5 in particular played a lot like Mass Effect 2 and 3, albeit without the RPG depth or breadth, replaced instead with claustrophobic linearity. It was still great, but not exemplary by any means. Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 seem to have suffered the same fate, evaporating from the discourse as fast as they arrived for whatever reason.
While it's too early to say for sure if Fable is going to land as well as it seems it could, it does, to me, seem like something of a new dawn for Xbox. Playground Games are at the apex of the industry, but have often been unfairly overlooked due to their chosen genre. Racing games unfairly don't get the respect they deserve, but I think it's at least partially for subconscious reasons. The emotive experiences offered by The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, Expedition 33, Final Fantasy, and so on, seem to be the types of experiences that players often connect with on a deeper level.
With Fable, it seems that Playground will showcase its adeptness at both types of experiences. The systems-heavy online gameplay of Forza Horizon 6, with the emotional character-led depth of a game like Fable — if it lands, Playground will solidify itself as one of the best studios in the world.
I think there's another story here though, as I outlined in my recent write up of Fable's January Xbox Developer_Direct reveal.
Microsoft has shed exclusivity for Xbox games, which has hurt the Xbox community and robbed the Xbox ecosystem of major hardware selling points. But in a post-Fortnite, post-Roblox world, exclusivity matters less and less to newer customers coming in. Younger cohorts in particular are flooded with content on every platform with the sorts of immediacy that traditional console holders can only dream of.
It's in this universe that I think "AA" just doesn't cut it anymore. When the most popular games in the world are hyper-memeable slop like "Catch a Brainrot" in Roblox or Fortnite with its Kim Kardashian skins, only the most exemplary experiences seem to have a chance to cut through the deluge of smaller, often "free" experiences on offer.
The era of the full price "AA" game seems to be well and truly over, where players really do expect a certain quality bar in exchange for their $70. Xbox Game Pass has probably accelerated this too, as it frees users of paying $70 for games that aren't quite on the same level as the stand outs, like Elden Ring and the like. It's also often the case that lower-priced games beat full-priced games for depth and quality, too.
To Microsoft's credit, it has continued letting developers experiment with smaller titles regardless. Keeper and Double Fine's upcoming game "Kiln" are great examples of this, as well as Obsidian's Pentiment. I've heard that Obsidian has other smaller projects on the way — as well as much more ambitious, complex ones too. Double Fine as well, I'm told, has a bigger project to follow up Kiln. InXile of Wasteland game also said that its upcoming game, Clockwork Revolution, is 10x more ambitious than anything it has done before.
But, now that Microsoft can leverage PlayStation's massive install base (and Nintendo's as well down the line), they can take on the kind of capital risk that big, AAA publishers often do as well — whether it's EA's Battlefield, CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk 2077, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 6, or From Software's Elden Ring. These are projects that simply couldn't exist on the scale and game-of-the-year-grade quality bar without being multiplatform.
I've heard that Gears: E-Day, State of Decay 3, and the next mainline Halo should see similarly ambitious jumps in depth and breadth too. Owing to the fact that they can leverage PlayStation's audience and sales potential, Xbox can offset some of that upfront risk that PC and Xbox exclusivity artificially foists upon Microsoft's developers. It can grow the teams, invest in longer development cycles, and expect more ambitious sales targets as a result.
Where does that leave Xbox hardware?
Well, we know Xbox Series X|S sales have declined almost free-fall style since the pandemic. Thankfully, this hasn't prevented major publishers from continuing support for the Xbox ecosystem. In fact, Xbox's arch rival PlayStation brought Helldivers 2 and is bringing Marathon to Xbox this year, owing to Xbox's disproportionately passionate, spendy, and engaged audience.
The next Xbox will be a Windows PC as I've previously written, but it's still worth being concerned about. Is there a point where Xbox's ecosystem loses enough users to convince developers that it isn't worth it? We've not seen evidence of it so far, but it remains to be seen if features like Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Play Anywhere, and Xbox Cloud Gaming access represent enough of a selling point to beat PlayStation's exclusive games line-up. PlayStation's hardware sales have declined too, though ... despite having a strong exclusive line-up of games.
With competition from TikTok, YouTube, and so on, console platforms have found it more difficult than ever to find users looking for casual entertainment. Going multi-platform was inevitable in that universe, but on the plus side, it looks as though the games we'll get will hit a quality bar previously inaccessible to Xbox's game studios, as it taps into the global gaming audience, rather than its isolated green corner.
But what do you think? Let us know, down below.
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