Well to be fair, they also have some stuff like Gigantic, Phantom Dust and Voodoo Vince Remaster announced.Gigantic has more or less already released. It's been in open beta for some time now. Games like that which are F2P and get an open beta, like Paragon, have essentially been released. They just don't call it a "release" because they're still in the process of adding content and they don't want it reviewed yet. Even Gematsu lists it as released at this point. Voodoo Vince might not even be a retail release. Gematsu currently lists it as a digital-only title. That doesn't make it any less of a game, but it's not a big deal from what I've seen. Virtually no one talks about it.
Also MS doesn't have a major game currently announced that's not at least aiming at 2017.
Realistically Forza 7 will still be announced for this year, probably at E3. Halo 6 seems like a lock as well and a sequel to Ori and the blind forest was leaked last year already so I'm guessing this'll come at this years E3 too.
The question is this: Do we really think MS would go into 2018 with only Halo 6 and Ori 2 announced for the year (and then later on add Forza Horizon 4)? I don't know about you guys but to me this sounds absolutely insane, they have to have something else cooking up that we just can't foresee yet.
The list currently stands at 23 digital-only titles and 4 retail releases, which includes the Phantom Dust remaster. It should be noted that many of these games have been known about for almost 3 years or more at this point. Cuphead and Below are two games in particular that were announced a long time ago, got a lot of attention, but still have yet to even be given a release date. Wulverblade, though still listed as an Xbox/PC exclusive, has since been confirmed as coming to PS4 and has been on the list for years. ION, from the guy who made DayZ, was announced a year and a half ago with almost nothing known about it and yet there is confirmation that he is already working on another game. Tacoma was announced at The Game Awards in 2014 and was delayed until Q1 2017, but no release date has yet been given.
Bottomline is, Xbox One has virtually nothing. The amount of exclusive titles releasing for it is far more akin to a console that is about to die than one that has years left in it. Most of its games were announced quite a long time ago and even its lesser titles have gone through development hell to the point where there are either questions if they will ever release or if they'll just end up on a competitor's platform by the time they do.
Well we don't know how much Microsoft paid these companies for the exclusivity. I wouldn't be surprised to see some 3rd party exclusives, still, but I'm not expecting any companies to be too willing. They'll ask for a large amount of money, that's for sure.Phil says a lot of things and it's obvious why he's saying them at the time. Can't really get any third party deals? Make it sound like it's because you don't like them and want to focus on first party. Closing down a bunch of first party studios and cancelling projects? Get people to look the other way by announcing a timed exclusive Dead Rising title and a three-game exclusivity deal with the makers of State of Decay.
On top of that, Phil has said he wanted to focus on first parties. So its quite unlikely they'll get any on the scale of Scalebound or Sunset Overdrive in the future I think