Fresh off the gameplay reveal for Gears of War: E-Day at June’s Summer Game Fest, it appears Xbox may have even more projects waiting in the wings. A recently discovered business profile of a former Xbox executive suggests that the company has been overseeing three unannounced games, which include an MMO and an action RPG.
The information comes from the LinkedIn profile of Rob Shepherd, who held the title of Xbox Game Studios Publishing Director of Production and Executive Producer of Cloud Gaming for 3 years and 7 months. In a description of his responsibilities, Shepherd stated that he managed ‘three new games/devs’ with a heavy focus on live service operations and cloud technology. While unnamed, these game projects included an ‘Online FPS, a Hero Collector MMO, and an ARPG.’
The executive also noted that all of the development teams involved were externally owned studios. This suggests that Xbox’s secret projects are made by partner developers rather than being developed internally by Xbox Game Studios teams. Beyond that, it offers little information about the games themselves. It’s also unclear whether all three projects remain in active development, given the significant layoffs, studio closures, and restructuring that have taken place across Microsoft’s gaming division in recent years.
It’s not surprising that Xbox is working on another multiplayer FPS. After all, Halo was once the cultural juggernaut that put Xbox on the gaming map. The ‘hero collector’ MMO and RPG, on the other hand, are what really piqued my interest. Who exactly are making them, and what kind of franchise could support that model? Rather interestingly, however, one particularly dubious rumour claimed that Obsidian pitched a Destiny-style Halo MMO shooter during Phil Spencer’s tenure. The story largely amounted to a “my uncle works at Nintendo” as there’s no evidence to support the claim so far. Whether it’s complete fiction or there’s a grain of truth to it, however, nobody knows for sure.
Still, this discovery comes during an interesting period for Xbox, as recent reports have mentioned that Team Green is reconsidering its strategy to improve profitability. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has confirmed that both Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution would remain exclusive to Xbox consoles, while rumors said the former was supposed to have received a PS5 port. Meanwhile, in an interview, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has also emphasised the need for the company’s gaming business to become ‘a more sustainable business‘ as one of the ‘best sources of entertainment.’ Against that backdrop, the existence of multiple unannounced projects suggests there may still be plenty of fight left in Xbox — even if it’s facing a losing battle against PlayStation and Nintendo.
