During a conversation with Axios, Booty said: "It seems to me that both the fans and the industry itself have taken a while to assimilate the change in the production time of games, which is no longer two or three years."
Specifying on the high-investment games, Booty indicated that now "they require periods of four, five or even six years."
Looking at the Xbox 360 and PS3 generations, many major franchises released up to three games in a series in the life cycle of a single console - Gears of War, Halo (3, Reach, 4) and Uncharted are examples. The Xbox One and PS4 generations have seen a decrease in this frequency, reflecting the increase in game production costs and the number of professionals involved in each project.
Even franchises with annual releases such as Assassin's Creed (which traditionally released a new title every Christmas until a recent break) and Call of Duty (with annual releases for almost two decades) are maintained thanks to the alternation between different studios in development, which means a period of three or four years dedicated to each title.
Starfield, the big Xbox highlight for the year, will be the first game released by Bethesda Game Studios since Fallout 4 in 2015, representing a break of almost a decade between releases.
To give you an idea, Fallout 3 was released in 2008 and after a year of expansions, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released just three years later.
Bethesda confirmed that it was working on The Elder Scrolls 6 through a teaser shown in 2018, but it's likely that it won't be released until around ten years after the announcement, corroborating Booty's prediction.
Booty's comments come amid criticism of Xbox for the slow pace of high-profile releases that have affected the platform in recent years.
Although Sunday's Xbox Game Showcase seemed to indicate an improvement in this situation, it was still noted that some of the games on show, such as the Fable reboot developed by Playground, still have no definite release date despite being announced several years ago.
O reboot de Perfect Dark, The Outer World’s 2 da Obsidian e Indiana Jones da Machine Games também estavam ausentes da conferência. Levando em consideração as declarações de Booty, pode-se prever que esses títulos ainda levarão algum tempo para serem lançados.
"We're facing higher and higher expectations," Booty told Axios. "The quality of what we can offer is only increasing."
In the same week, Booty shared with the press that he believes Xbox has already begun to change the situation with regard to the regularity of its own game releases. "But it will be in 2024 that we see a real breakthrough in this regard," he concluded.
Source: VGC
