Delaying Avowed Shows Xbox Still Don’t Get It

Avowed has been delayed into 2025 to give it room within a chockablock run of Xbox releases later this year. Which would be all good and well… but what releases are we talking about?

Take out the PC-style strategy games, Call of Duty (which will be everywhere), DLC and AA games and you’re left with Indiana Jones. Which I’m not going to knock for a second, but if that’s your main release for the entire year, then something has gone very wrong.

Let me justify removing things. The strategy games are very cool, and very niche. Especially on console. Call of Duty is fantastic, but isn’t an Xbox first party game in the way Avowed and Indy are. People already know if they like Call of Duty or not. The audience is already built in. The expansion packs for Diablo and World of Warcraft are cool, but even including them on the first party releases list is pushing it. They’re options for people already invested in these titles. They’re expansions.

And I’m as excited for Towerborne as anybody. The new Flight Simulator is really cool too. But are either the kind of major release Xbox needs?

As is obvious from the list above, if you play everything Microsoft brings out over the next four months, you’re not going to have time for Avowed. That’s fine. There’s plenty coming to Game Pass to satiate most appetites. This isn’t a doom and gloom article.

Avowed, Indy, and The Problem with Release Schedules

But it does highlight that there is still a problem with release schedules at Xbox. At the beginning of this year fans of AAA blockbusters had a few major games to look forward to from Xbox: Indiana Jones, Senua’s Sacrifice 2 and Avowed. Senua wasn’t what many hoped it would be (which was unfair, but there you go). That left two chances in 12 months to shake the narrative that Microsoft isn’t releasing blockbuster games. And they just pushed one into 2025.

And while 2025 will probably be chockablock too, suddenly gaining a major game in the first quarter means there probably wasn’t already anything there. I’m not going to examine that too tightly. Perhaps they have a year full of blockbusters that’ll prove their efforts have finally borne fruit.

Or maybe they’ll have a couple of attention grabbing games and delay one into 2026.

Neither console publisher has managed to get the cadence right when it comes to blockbuster games. The obvious difference being that Sony is given then benefit of the doubt. When they deliver, they deliver. Microsoft – as great as their games are – have yet to prove themselves on this front.

The idea that they think Avowed needs space in a holiday season filled with strategy games, flight sims and expansion packs means there will be plenty of people who don’t even look at the Xbox line-up this Christmas. Would Avowed have moved that needed? Maybe not. But there would have been no doubt that at least the games have started to come.

I’m not one to suggest companies do things just for the sake of doing them. But from a narrative standpoint, having a holiday season too packed with good games is much better than delaying something to give it space.