“Surprise!”
Well, this is a turn of events. Crackdown 3 has officially been delayed until spring of next year, per Polygon.
This is shocking news to me. If you’ve read previous articles on The Punished Backlog before, you’ve noticed that we’ve been covering mainly Nintendo and PlayStation games, and not Xbox ones. We don’t do out of spite; Microsoft has simply yet to make a mark this year in terms of exclusives and marketing.
From the announcement of the Xbox One X, which has since fizzled out in light of the Nintendo Switch’s success, to the lack of console exclusives in 2017, Microsoft has been dropping the ball constantly this year.
I wish to stay objective on a news matter like this. However, the announcement of Crackdown 3 strikes a nerve for me. While the game undoubtedly needed more time, and I applaud Phil Spencer for okaying its delay, that doesn’t excuse Xbox’s paltry line-up. Sea of Thieves and Forza look great—we know this. Yet one of those games releases every single year, while the other is set for 2018.
Taking a step back from Microsoft’s dearth of AAA support, gamers are left with Cuphead, State of Decay 2, and a few other games we could sit here and nitpick. The point is that Microsoft needs to reassess its commitment to software-making, and it needs to do so now. Not soon. Not after next E3. Now.
