To use a sports analogy, Hideo Kojima is like a superstar athlete whose previous team (PlayStation) dropped him for, reportedly, salary-cap reasons. Xbox was all too happy to sign him, and unsurprisingly, they trotted him out at the Tokyo Game Show as the new face of the franchise. As they should. If this really was a sports team, a giant banner featuring Kojima’s face would be hung up on the outside of the stadium, and his jersey would be sold at the team shop.
Getting Kojima’s next two projects as Xbox exclusives, or at least what could be Xbox exclusives – Xbox hasn’t yet announced that, but given CEO Asha Sharma’s refocus on exclusives and the common-sense thought that Xbox probably didn’t just sign Physint to publish it on PlayStation 6 – gives the next-gen Project Helix two big-name exclusives before Microsoft’s next-gen console has even been formally revealed.
I say Project Helix – it seems sensible to bet that Kojima’s projects (and thus whatever bonus his work can provide the Xbox brand) won’t arrive on Xbox Series X. OD is coming out before Physint, which Kojima himself said in 2025 is 5-6 years away, and while I suspect that the Series X will be supported for a longer period thanks to the fact that console prices continue to head in the wrong direction, past generation cycles would suggest that Helix will likely arrive before OD and Physint. Thus, OD might help kick things off fairly early in Helix’s lifecycle.
Looking beyond that, though, Xbox seems to – dare I say it – be heading in the right direction. I know, I know: I’ve said that before and so I probably sound like the Xboy Who Cried Wolf at this point, but let’s take a look at the pieces that Sharma has put in place so far. If Xbox really is serious about keeping its games off of rival consoles, then gamers might have plenty of reasons to jump ship from PlayStation back to Xbox in the next generation, just as they did from PS2 to Xbox 360.
Kojima will bring the prestige, which is something that Xbox has very much lacked, and will go a long way towards luring fans who’ve been loyal to him on PlayStation – that’s almost certainly why Microsoft signed him even after dropping four studios and laying off thousands of people mere weeks ago. But the biggest weapon in Xbox’s next-gen arsenal is undoubtedly The Elder Scrolls 6. Sharma raved about a recent demo she saw, but then again what else would she say about her most valuable asset? Still, there’s no denying that the first Elder Scrolls game in nearly two decades by the time it finally comes out will be a juggernaut. If Sharma has the intestinal fortitude to keep it off of PlayStation platforms, then that’s a whole lot of people buying her new console. I think she should and I think she will take this approach; if you’re going to return to exclusives you have to go all-in, lest you get the confusing mess Xbox’s exclusivity policy has been over the past couple of years.
OK, so thus far we’ve got OD (aka PT’s spiritual successor), Physint (aka Metal Gear Solid’s spiritual successor) and The Elder Scrolls 6. What else? Well, there’s Obsidian’s new Fallout game that’s being led by Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer. It remains to be seen whether or not the Fallout TV show can keep its pop-culture momentum going long enough to still be relevant when that project is finally ready to ship, but a new Fallout game from the makers of New Vegas is going to be huge regardless. Keep in mind that, like The Elder Scrolls, fans have been waiting a long, long time – the last mainline, single-player Fallout game is already over a decade old. And if its successor is exclusive? That’s a big, big deal.
Meanwhile, Fable will ship in five months on both Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, but if it lives up to developer Playground’s pedigree established by its masterpiece Forza Horizon games, then the sequel is almost guaranteed to be both fantastic and exclusive to Xbox. Not to mention that Fable 2 should get turned around a lot faster than it took to build this reboot, which had to start from scratch.
Finally, there’s Forza, Halo, and Gears of War. The latter looks set to reestablish itself with E-Day, a prequel that helps revive the powerhouse series by returning its focus to the characters that we all love. If the whole thing is as awesome as what I’ve played so far, it sets up The Coalition to create another exclusive Gears adventure, which would presumably land in the middle of the Helix generation. Forza Horizon doesn’t need any fixing; the bigger question is, does Xbox dare to pull it off of PlayStation next time around after Forza Horizon 5 sold millions of copies despite launching years later on Sony’s platform?
Halo, on the other hand, absolutely needs fixing. Its future seems wildly uncertain, with Halo Studios leadership turning over recently and pivoting everything to Unreal Engine on the tech side. Halo: Campaign Evolved was fine, but does the studio even know what the next mainline game is yet? Is it Halo 7/Infinite 2? Is it a reboot? It’s already been five years since the last mainline Halo game, and it seems like it’s going to be at least five more. So…yeah, we’ll have to check back on that one.
Still, if rising console prices don’t crash the entire industry, then Xbox is set up to really turn things around in the Helix generation. It won’t happen overnight, and I’m not suggesting that they’ll suddenly overtake PlayStation in consoles sold, but the pieces are there for an Xbox 360 Redux-like situation, and I think we’d all be thrilled if that actually came to pass.