In case you have not heard, Scalebound was cancelled today by Microsoft. This has left me feeling sort of empty inside for multiple reasons. Is Platinum in trouble? Is Xbox in trouble? Platinum could be saved for another blog. I'd also like to apologize ahead of time for my english. I'm still working to get better at it, so please bare with me.

Phil Spencer was appointed to be head of Xbox a couple of years ago. A lot of people, including myself, thought this was a great thing. For the most part, he has done a great job. Xbox One's are selling well now, Xbox One backwards compatibility is a great feature, and Xbox Live continues to be the best console online service.

With all of that said, one could argue that the quality of Microsoft Studios games has gone down. Recore possibly wasn't finished, Quantum Break was arguably Remedy's worst game, Halo 5's campaign was critically panned, and Gears 4 is more of the same (I think it's the worst numbered Gears game). With the downward trend in quality, sales have also gone down for their big titles (Gears 4 and Halo 5).

Now Scalebound has been cancelled. So where does Xbox go from here? As of right now, Xbox has Sea of Thieves, Halo Wars 2, maybe Crackdown 3, State of Decay 2 and probably an unannounced Forza Motorsport game. What do those games all have in common? They're all multiplayer first games. Even games that were cancelled, Fable Legends and now Scalebound were multiplayer-centric. They basically have no single player games on the pipeline, unless they have secret studios that are working on other projects. I think that is really unlikely.

So since Microsoft is clearly getting out of the single player games business, what does this mean? I think Minecraft is the answer to this question. Minecraft is a phenomenon. It is a game that has been playable for years, but continues to be on the sales charts. They continue to update it and people continue to play it. It is one of the prime examples of "games as services". PC games such as League of Legends, Dota 2, Overwatch, TF2, CSGO, etc.. are continuing to be updated and they are being rewarded by people playing a lot. This correlates with people spending more money on these games (skins, blind boxes, keys, hats). They only want to create games that can last a long time because their other games are not selling well.

This leads to the play anywhere feature being added to the Xbox brand this year. They are trying to branch the PC and Xbox communities with their games. By making games as a service, Microsoft can have people play on PC and Xbox One. They can carry their saves and progress between machines. Most importantly, they will spend more money on these games.

So now that we've established this, what do I think of this? I've never been a Halo guy, so a new Halo doesn't really speak to me; especially after Halo 5's campaign and Gears 4 was not that great. This is leaving me at a crossroads with the Xbox and I'm sure I am not the only one. None of their "console exclusive" games are that interesting because they are mostly tired franchises. I don't know how they can win me back.

With the Scorpio on the horizon, I can only hope that Microsoft does their best to create the best possible games because then their games as a service strategy will not succeed.