Four Game Releases A Year On Xbox Is No Longer An Aspiration “But Our Plan”, Phil Spencer Explains

When reflecting on Microsoft’s release track record, the first-party lineup remains to be questionable at best in terms of entries to purchase Xbox Series X|S. Even at launch Microsoft warned that there would be no Xbox Game Studios titles at least for the first year. But 2023 has been recognized as one of Microsoft’s strongest years as we head into the fall soon.

With a glimpse at Starfield, it is clear that more games are on the horizon. Previously, it was stated an ongoing ambition of Microsoft is to ship a game each quarter – four titles per year. And recently, Microsoft said the start of that reality is nearing. At Gamescom, the Xbox firm told gamesindustry.biz that Starfield is the “starting gun” for a fulfilling lineup from Xbox Game Studios moving forward.

And to emphasize on that, the ‘aspiration’ is now the ‘plan’ Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer explained to IGN. During a Gamescom interview, Spencer elaborated on the matter with the effort finally materializing over at Xbox Game Studios.

What I can say is we’re going to have more beats to talk about more of what we do because the content lineup is so strong and I say that completely recognizing that 2022 wasn’t so strong. But, y’know, we have our biggest booth here at Gamescom and we have a huge presence – I think there’s like 30+ playable games on our floor, a lot of first-party games; Towerborne’s here, Ara’s here, obviously Forza, so like it’s awesome to see the footprint we have in the game portfolio from our first-party, from our partners, from Game Pass – all of it.

Spencer continues: “So I think what you’re going to see from us where maybe the last couple of years we’ve been more on an annual in terms of when we talk about our games around, I still call it E3, around the E3 timeframe; this year we did the Developer Direct in January, we did our showcase, we’re here in the biggest we’ve ever been at Gamescom and you’re going to see more regular times to talk about our games because we just- the portfolio is deep enough that we can support that.

“Yeah, more than that this year,” Spencer answers if Xbox is on track with Booty’s statement on four annual releases. “We started with Hi-Fi, Minecraft Legends, Redfall – maybe people don’t want to give us credit for Redfall, I get it- like I understand, Starfield, Forza; we just dropped Age 4 console, I’m gonna play that and then going into next year, absolutely. We have talked about it as an aspiration now we can talk about it as our plan.”

What is your impression from Spencer’s statement on Xbox Game Studios release plans?