Right. Grounded + Pentiment + Hi-Fi Rush in September, November, January was great. They weren’t quite able to keep that going and Redfall was a huge miss but those months were serious progress compared to, like, all the rest of 2022, and I think we’ll get to the point where we see a cadence more like that from them going forward, and with some AAA games in there too.
If they can execute on, say, Starfield in September, Forza in November, Hellblade in Q1, Avowed in Q2, with some smaller/partner titles like their game with Stoic peppered in there too, that’s a really strong cadence and not really behind what, like, Sony does. Despite what some people seem to think, Sony doesn’t have a AAA banger every quarter; it’s looking increasingly like their big thing in the whole back half of the year is Spider-man 2, and their big game this quarter is a third-party title they made a timed exclusivity deal with.
Neither Microsoft nor Sony are likely to be like Nintendo, where they release like 12+ games a year and essentially can carry their entire platform on their own, but a willingness to make smaller games like Grounded/Pentiment/Hi-Fi Rush (all creative new IP!) means I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a few years, Microsoft was actually closer to that cadence than Sony was. Sony seems to want to release one or two mega-budget AAAA cinematic experiences a year, MLB The Show, and very little else.