While Sony has been having a great launch window around the PlayStation 5, Xbox and Nintendo have mostly been quiet about the status of their big exclusives. Xbox is reportedly hoping to launch Halo Infinite by the end of 2021, but it also seems like they had big hopes for Nintendo, who are currently sitting with a handful of announced yet unreleased exclusives.
This is according to a new document that was published by Xbox, outlining what would’ve been their plans for the third and fourth quarter of 2020. The document reveals that in August 2020, Xbox believed that Nintendo’s release slate from October through to December 2020 would’ve at least included The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, Bayonetta 3 and more big titles under the Japanese companies umbrella.
READ MORE
Mass Effect Legendary Edition Performance Modes for Console and PC Detailed
The document was part of the ongoing Epic v. Apple trial, which revealed that Xbox was keeping a close eye on their competitors in the gaming market. They had high hopes for Nintendo, in particular, who was mostly quiet in the second half of 2020 in terms of major releases. Xbox believed that Nintendo’s line-up at the time for the last three months of 2020 would’ve included The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, Bayonetta 3, Shin Megami Tensei 5 and Metroid Prime 4. However, none of those titles ended up being released in that window.
It also mentioned both Bravely Default 2 and No More Heroes 3 launching in 2021 as planned, though both underwent a slight delay. Interestingly enough, a section of the document has a redacted bar under PlayStation 5’s launch titles, which suggests that Xbox knew about an unnamed PS5 title that was expected to launch with Sony’s console. Some have speculated that this title would’ve been Horizon Forbidden West, though it’ll remain unconfirmed.
As for Xbox’s plans, they also had a few games scheduled to release within the window of late last year and in the first half of 2021. One game was originally meant to presumably launch alongside the Xbox Series X/S – which some believed to be Halo Infinite – while two more were planned to release in the first quarter of 2021. Due to the ongoing global pandemic, several video games that would’ve already been announced or released right now remain unannounced.
While this is all just internal speculation over the data presented, plans could’ve changed at Microsoft regarding the release schedule or announcements of several of their upcoming games since August 2020. We’ll just have to wait for E3 2021 to hopefully find out more about these mysterious titles.
Source: IGN
