Xbox Game Studios-chefen lovar ett mindre kaotiskt releaseschema framöver

Det är svårare än någonsin att fånga publikens uppmärksamhet i dag, särskilt i spelvärlden. Spelen har blivit så omfattande att det är svårt att klara ens ett eller två AAA-spel på rimlig tid. Det är något som Xbox Game Studios-chefen Craig Duncan är smärtsamt medveten om. Efter 2025, då stora utannonseringar och stora lanseringar från Xbox delvis krockade med varandra, vill han ändra strategi inför 2026. I en intervju hos GamesRadar+ säger han:

"I think that we ideally want to space things out and make sure games have their own, as we like to call it, oxygen in those moments. It's just super busy. Our own release schedule is one thing, but then you have everyone else's release schedule at the same time. I think that we ideally want to space things out and make sure games have their own, as we like to call it, oxygen in those moments. It's just super busy. Our own release schedule is one thing, but then you have everyone else's release schedule at the same time.

There are very few windows and there's more and more games, and more competition for a player's time. There's also movies, music, and all this other stuff as well that gets packed in. So the learning was this: let's not put stuff on top of our stuff, and I think we have done that. Let our games have a bit of oxygen, even though it's always busy and there's never really a free time to launch something."

Duncan vill också att det ska bli tydligare vilka spel som släpps dag ett till Playstation 5. Nyligen tyckte vissa fans att det var märkligt att Forza Horizon 6 inte lanseras direkt till Playstation 5, medan Fable gör det, trots att båda spelen utvecklas av samma studio:

"There's always development realities about when these projects start - how big a team is, and what plans we have at the start of development. Like you said, when a strategy changes, maybe you've got a plan that exists with a game and maybe you can adopt that, maybe you can't. So that's why. And to be clear, this is totally fair feedback. Sometimes we are inconsistent. You see some games in one place, some games in multiple places. Just know that we're going to work on that, and we're going to try and be more consistent with what we do.

But you know, for our game makers, if you're on the Fable team you just want as many people who love Fable to appreciate the great work that the team's doing. That's always our goal. It's rarely more complicated than that. It's like, how can we get this game to as many players as we can?"