Xbox's Game Awards No-Show Is a Slap in the Face to Players

ign.com:

It's a bad sign when there were more Muppets at The Game Awards than Xbox world premieres. As someone who's been playing and covering Xbox for 20 years, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more baffled by the console-maker’s decision-making. I tweeted my frustration as soon as the industry's glitziest event of the year came to its awkward end, and if the hundreds of responses to that tweet told me anything, it's that this was no hot take. How could it be? Microsoft literally showed nothing for the year to come, despite promising us a huge 2023 at last summer's Xbox Showcase.

In June last year I foolishly declared the years-long exclusives drought over ahead of Microsoft’s fantastic Fall 2021. In hindsight, that period has been an exception rather than the new rule. Xbox fans suffered through an exceptionally dry year (shout-out to Obsidian’s fantastic, if niche, Pentiment, though!) and also had to watch PlayStation exclusives delight PS5 owners at The Game Awards all night long, from Forspoken to Final Fantasy XVI to Death Stranding 2.

Then, to add one more kick in the groin, Xbox players watched Sony-backed developers wear out a path to The Game Awards stage to accept award after award for the fantastic exclusive games they shipped throughout 2022.

Even Xbox superfans like Kobrille expressed their disappointment. There was simply no defending Microsoft, and I'm left scratching my head. Clearly the company has a strategy. The Xbox leadership team didn't wake up the day of the show in a cold sweat exclaiming, "Oh no, we forgot about The Game Awards!" like they were Kevin McCallister's mom in Home Alone. The single, predominant theory bandied about online in the wake of Microsoft’s “presence” at the show was that it was intentionally