Microsoft had a successful year in 2018 — especially when it comes to the Xbox One X — but the lack of compelling exclusives was felt throughout the year. While the competition recieved titles like God of War, Spider-Man, and Super Mario Odyssey, the Xbox One only managed to hit the 92 Metacritic mark with Forza Horizon 4.
Despite this, today Microsoft discussed on Xbox Wire what its gaming division accomplished in 2018. You can read some of the highlights below.
- In 2018, the company added 116 additional high-quality titles to the Xbox Game Pass catalog across genres. There are currently have more than 65 partners — up from 25 at our launch in June 2017. In addition, 17 titles launched the same day as their global release into Xbox Game Pass, including Sea of Thieves, Laser League, State of Decay 2, Warhammer 2: Vermintide, Graveyard Keeper, Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption, and Forza Horizon 4.
- Members increased their total time gaming on Xbox by almost twenty percent more than before and are also increasing their total number of games played by almost forty more, including titles outside the Xbox Game Pass catalog.
- In 2018, seven new first-party studios joined the Xbox roster, including the acquisition of Playground Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, InXile Entertainment, and Obsidian Entertainment, along with the creation of The Initiative.
- Microsoft added over a hundred new titles to backward compatibility, bringing the full catalog to over 550 games, 57 of which are Xbox One X Enhanced.
- Forza Horizon 4 was the only Microsoft exclusive to score about a 90 on Metacritic and also broke a lot of sales records for the company.
- Sea of Thieves became the fastest-selling new Microsoft franchise of this generation.
- ID@Xbox released their thousandth game.
- Xbox One got cross-play with Nintendo Switch and other systems on a variety of games including Fortnite.
- In January 2018, Mixer announced ten million monthly active users only to see that number double to more than twenty million monthly active users six months later.
- X018 took place in Mexico City and garnered over twenty million viewers.
However, 2019 should be an even better year for the company because compelling exclusives like Gears 5. Hopefully other experiences like Crackdown 3 will like up to expectations as well. You can read some of the highlights below.
- Crackdown 3, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Gears 5, Gears Pop!, and Minecraft: Dungeons all slated to launch this year.
- Microsoft will reveal what many of its studios are working on this year, probably at E3 2019.
- Sea of Thieves will get even more expansions like "The Arena" in 2019.
- ID@Xbox will continue to grow and release even more titles.
- Lastly, games like Anthem, Devil May Cry 5, Kingdom Hearts 3, Metro Exodus, Mortal Kombat 11, Resident Evil 2, The Division 2, and more should launch on Xbox One with Xbox One X support.
Last year Microsoft proved that it could lead when it came to hardware with the Xbox One X. Hopefully this year we'll see a lot of compelling exclusives that are on the horizon. Hopefully new games from Ninja Theory and other will be revealed in the coming months. That's the only place where the Xbox ecosystem lacks at the moment.
