Too few Xbox games in 2022: Phil Spencer apologizes and promises to get better

As far as exclusive games go, 2022 has been a rather disappointing year for Xbox, which Xbox boss Phil Spencer also acknowledges.

Among other things, the shifts of Starfield and Redfall were decisive for this. Only five games were released and distributed by Xbox Game Studios, and only one of them (Pentiment) was developed in-house. Other than that, there was the externally developed As Dusk Falls, an expansion for Forza Horizon 5, Age of Empires re-releases, and Obsidian’s Grounded left its Early Access.

What must happen in the future

Spencer took responsibility for this in an interview with IGN. However, he is confident about the next twelve months.

“Our commitment to our fans is that we need to consistently release great games for people to play on our platform, and we certainly haven’t done that enough in 2022,” Spencer admits. “And basically, that’s on me. I’m at the helm of the business.”

“The commitment to our customers to keep delivering great games is something I take seriously, and teams take it seriously. 2022 was short on games. We’re excited to go into 2023, we had the developers Direct – I had a really good feeling about the games that we’ve shown – and knowing that Starfield is a game that we’re going to highlight in a show of our own, it was about starting 2023 with a good momentum. Like you said, I think we needed that.”

As part of the live stream, dates for Redfall and Minecraft Legends were mentioned, among other things, and there was also a surprise release with Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush.

“We’ve had things like Pentiment, which came out in November and was a really quality game, but there has to be more. If I look at Minecraft Legends, if I look at Redfall, the work we’re doing on Forza Motorsport, and one my favorite franchises, The Elder Scrolls Online… I think it was important for us to show games and dates.”