So I'm looking at Xbox studios and thinking about how clever I am, stream of consciousness.
I theorized a while ago that Xbox wanted to turn "RPGs" into a series, at minimum annual if not more. I say this because for Game Pass genre fans are an important sub category. If you only play RPGs, and Game Pass gets one every 5 years, what's the point? Just buy them outright and save money. In terms of genres though, Xbox obviously has Western RPG locked, you can expect a minimum of one a year from their internal studios, an absolute minimum. We currently know of what, at least six in various stages of development? Not even including 3rd party games and things like EA Play or any other addons that may come later.
Next most represented genre is shooter. Just FPS we've got three beloved franchises done by decorated teams, add in Gears which, while not a first person shooter is considered a shooter by most. Even just with three teams, if one of those teams wasn't developing a game as big as Halo Infinite that'd probably be close to a game a year. Plus most of those games have multi-player modes that can live on for a long time as kinda service games. EA play also brings series like Battlefield and Battlefront, albeit later than launch.
Horror is another strong point for Xbox. You've got full on horror studio like Tango, you've got teams like Ninja Theory and Compulsion who are working on games with varying degrees of horror, and you've got franchises like Gears, Hellblade, Prey and Dishonored that all of at least some horror elements. Add to that Bloober who is basically a "2nd party" Xbox horror studio.
Action is in a good position to be the next big Xbox genre. Ninja Theory is a standout action studio, Tango has some pedigree in the genre, so does whichever Bethesda studio used to be Battlecry Studio, but they're not really guaranteed to come back to the genre. Playground could very well pull Fable in an action ROG direction, who knows. A Japanese team like CC2 could really boost action, and their relationship with Sega is great here, bringing Yakuza and maybe more stuff later.
They've got some strong "immersive Sim" type studios in Arkane and Compulsion, survival from Undead Labs and S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2, racing obviously with Forza, EA Play brings lots of sports games, Rare does its Rare thing and Doublefine does its Doublefine thing.
There's some blindspots for sure. JRPGs is one missing major genre. Maybe Sega and Altus will help with that one day, and now that they have Tango and a strong relationship with Sega, maybe they'll have an easier time building a first party in Japan. There's a few teams that could do some awesome things in that genre with the right support. Platformers are somewhere else they could stand to beef up their offerings. Psychonauts is a great start. Ori too I guess, but it's kind of a different end of the spectrum. Fighting games and party games are also genres. There's also that sort of 3rd person narrative action genre that Sony excels at.
With what we know about, and then wildcards like The Initiative, Roundhouse and Compulsion, the spread is insane. If you like lots of different genres, Xbox has them, if you only like one genre really, there's a good chance Xbox has that genre covered, and you can play around with some indies while you're waiting for the next big genre game. It's so much stuff.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21867255/twarren_200909_4177_0029.0.jpg)
