Forza Horizon 5 seems like it moved less units than FH4, when 5 was the seemingly better received game. Those ‘lost’ sales aren’t going to show up anywhere in the books.
Has FH5 really been better-received than FH4? It seems a year later, a lot of the hardcore fans have similar issues with it as Halo fans do with Halo Infinite. Some feel the Hot Wheels DLC was a retread, others feel the online leaderboards are completely broken, others still the game feels empty of players or the map isn't as engaging as it looks.
The core driving is solid still from what people are saying but there seem to be a lot of other issues with it. Next Forza Horizon's gonna have to go big with changes and scope to reinvigorate things, seems like the IP is basically at where Gears is at now: still pretty good, but stagnating.
How many titles could they really bring 4 or 5? In sheer volume there isn't going to be much of a difference, MS could even add another title for the back half of 23. Plus, they'll technically have Ghostwire and the AoE titles that will be new to Xbox players.
It's not about quantity, it's about quality. And more importantly than that, mainstream appeal & impact. I'm sure some could argue that Pentiment is a better RPG than the new Pokemon games on some technical merits and they'd be right; on some subjective merits they could probably come up with some good reasons. But a game like Pentiment simply has nowhere near the mainstream appeal & impact of a Pokemon, and it can't be argued as doing TOO much more on a technical or subjective/creative level to overcome what it lacks in that mainstream appeal.
Nintendo could simply release BOTW2 next year and immediately eat away at any attention or hype from Forza and RedFall, and most likely even Starfield depending on when the two release and just how good (or not) Starfield ends up being. Spiderman 2 from Sony is a very similar situation to BOTW2 in that respect. We also know the next Zelda & Spiderman games are going to be big blockbusters and high quality, but Starfield could be amazing or "just good" or mediocre, really.
The problem for Microsoft is that games they should've released by now are not out; they had a chance to gain a lot of legitimate mindshare and cache among gamers earlier on when Sony's output for PS5 was a bit lighter, and Nintendo's the same with Switch, not to mention most 3P devs still focusing on cross-gen and the bigger games still far out. But 2023 is bringing a LOT of high-caliber stuff from so many. FF XVI, Forspoken, Harry Potter, SF VI, Tekken 8 (IIRC), BOTW2, Spiderman 2, Hades II, the next COD...it's going to get really busy and can Microsoft's output prove to compete with those games in both quality and mainstream appeal?
Who knows...
That's a pretty good lineup. Much better than Sony's lmao
Two of those games aren't even out yet and you have no way of knowing if they're going to be good or not. 2-3 of the others are multiplatform games also on PS and/or Switch. The others are very niche with limited mainstream appeal due to the type of games they are (non-GT racing sim, historical RTS etc.).
If you prefer that lineup to what Sony have for next year then that's fine but simple fact is a LOT more people are looking forward to Spiderman 2, FF XVI, Stellar Blade etc. than of the games in that post you quoted.