The gap between Halo Infinite and Xbox's next AAA game in 2022 was a "disaster situation" says Phil Spencer

gamesradar.com:

Xbox boss Phil Spencer says the gap between AAA releases back in 2022 was a "disaster situation" for the team. 

As revealed via a leaked internal email (which has been made public due to the ongoing FTC vs. Microsoft lawsuit), Phil Spencer called 2022 a "disaster situation" for the company due to the huge 16-month gap between Halo Infinite and the next AAA release. The email, which was sent on May 7, 2022, included other Xbox executives such as Matt Booty, Tim Stuart, Sarah Bond, Jerret West, and more. 

"With the news that Starfield is going to miss Holiday [...], still not a ton of clarity on the launch date of Redfall and Stalker 2 [...], I feel we are in a huge hole with our games lineup both for platform marketing/differentiation and our Gamepass content," Spencer's email reads. "We keep talking about a bit AAA a quarter in the service and it feels like we are likely to go through a gap of almost 16 months between big exclusive launches on our platform. Halo Infinite being our last on December 8, 2021."

Phil Spencer called the 16 month gap between Halo and the next AAA game a "disaster" back in May 2022. I like his note about learning. pic.twitter.com/KYrdChHGHDSeptember 19, 2023

The email continues: "This is really a disaster situation for us given all we've invested in content across studios at our [Gamepass] content fund. We need to learn from this and build a plan forward." Below this, Spencer then suggests ways to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, including "better" portfolio planning on Xbox's games, "with real honesty on dates," and potentially delaying launches if needed. "We have to all understand that the situation we are in now is a failure of our planning and production execution," the