Matt Booty, president of game content and studios at Xbox, has laid out the company's future release plans for first-party titles.
Xbox's first-party offerings for 2023 were a varied bunch. We were treated to rhythm-based action in the form of Hi-Fi Rush, co-op vampire hunting with Redfall, Minecraft Legends brought strategy to the mix, and racing fans were catered for with Forza Motorsport. And to top it all off we finally got to experience Bethesda's out-of-this-world RPG Starfield.
Now, looking to the future, Booty says that fans can expect a major release from one of Xbox's lofty portfolio of studios four times a year. "We've got a goal of a big game four times a year," he says on Episode 32 of The Fourth Curtain podcast. "So every three months, we've got something new coming out."
The Xbox exec adds that "it feels like we're getting there" as he teases some of the games in the pipeline for 2024, including Ara: History Untold, a historical grand strategy game, and arcade beat 'em up Towerborne. Next year will also see us reunited with Senua for Hellblade 2.
Xbox is home to a large number of studios, including the likes of Bethesda, and now that the acquisition deal has finally gone through, Activision Blizzard. Still, Booty wants to make it clear that no matter how big or small, every game matters.
"On the one hand, you've got these huge franchises like Skyrim, like Halo," Booty explains, "these things that have been around for 20 years and have had tens of millions of people playing them. On the other side, you've got Tim Schafer from Double Fine making games like Psychonauts and smaller games, and teams like Obsidian that made Pentiment.
"All those two extremes and everything in between matter. Our job is to create a studio system where those things can all coexist and to create a place where creative people feel safe and supported so that they can be their authentic selves, they can do their best work and that creativity isn't just a possibility, that it becomes an inevitability."
On top of the titles already mentioned by Booty, Obsidian's highly anticipated action-RPG Avowed is set to launch sometime next year, as is inXile's steampunk-infused FPS Clockwork Revolution, so Xbox certainly looks on track to fill its first-party quota.
Keep up to date with all the titles coming to Microsoft's latest console with our guide to upcoming Xbox Series X games.
