I think there’s actually quite a bit of truth to what DocSeuss is saying, so I don’t understand all the cynicism here.
Microsofts process of greenlighting games is pretty straight forward: You pitch a game to their group of people and you’ve got people like Ken Lobb in that group. If you pitch something as: “We want to make a thing that’s just like that other game on the market!”, you will run against a wall with them. Ken would argue and argue that the idea is not unique enoguh - so, similar to Nintendo, that line of thinking is the last thing they wanna hear.
Now, does that apply to all their IPs? No, of course not, I’m also cynical about games like Halo, Gears and Forza at this point, but then again, these games have a huge fanbase and that fanbase often just wants more of the same. As long as that results in quality games like it did with Forza Horizon 3, do we really care that much? On Halo and Gears, I’m pretty sure they understand that these franchises ran out of juice a bit and just repeating the same thing again and again might not be what gamers want anymore at this point, so let’s look at what they have up their sleeves for Halo and Gears.
And I do think Microsoft is taking some risk all the time, just like Sony is. I mean, We approached Microsoft back then by making the argument that nobody is making HD Metroidvanias at this point even though games like Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night used to be critical darlings - And that was at a time when it was unthinkable that Konami or any other publisher would greenlight an HD Metroidvania packed full with high res 2d Handpainted Art at this point. Again, that was at a time when nobody seemed to take risks anymore, when every major AAA game needed a shoehorned multiplayer component and DLC added on top.
So we showed them our prototype of Ori, which was basically a HD Metroidvania with a bigger story focus and all of that done tastefully and they greenlit it. They couldn’t have known at the time that it would go on to become a big hit - They just took the gamble and for that I commend them. And now with Will of the Wisps, they allowed us to perfect that formula and really go all out on it even though Ori will probably never end up making ‘Halo money’. Now, obviously, Ori also doesn’t have a budget anywhere close to Halo, so it’s a smaller risk, but a risk nonetheless.
And if we wanna be cynical, I do kinda agree that Sony is starting to turn all their games into variations of Uncharted. I’m as excited about God of War as anybody else here, but it’s pretty clear that Sony Santa Monica took a good look at Uncharted when developing that game. Is that a bad thing necessarily? Nope, and it seemed to all have worked out. But is making another God of War that’s much closer to their other big hit that much of a risk? I don’t think so.
I’m personally not a fan of Rare’s output these days anymore and I think Sea of Thieves isn’t really a great game, but you definitey have to appreciate that Microsoft greenlit it anyway. It’s weird as fuck and totally goes against what seems to ‘work’ these days and they’ve been beaten up for trying to make something new and not quite hitting the landing, but hey, at least there was room for some innovation there.
I think the big thing you could definitely argue for is that Microsoft ‘forgot’ about backing talent in a big way for a while. They focused on making their hardware teams better (I think that’s pretty obvious looking at the original X1 and the new X1X), they focused on Xbox Live and GamePass and how all that will work in the future and they missed the boat on signing up talented devs for a while. So I’m guessing they signed bigger deals 2-3 years ago and now it just takes time until we see them reap the benefits from that. Sure, the proof is in the pudding, but again, what Doc is saying isn’t all wrong either.