No new XSN Sports games until 2005 @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on March 30, 2004

News: Microsoft pushes back all of it's yearly sports titles until 2005 at the earliest. Find out why inside.

IGN is reporting in a interview with Kevin Browne, XSN Sports Studio Manager, that Microsoft has no plans to release any XSN Sports titles after RalliSport Challenge 2 on May 4.

The reason given for the cutback was that executives at Microsoft believed that the XSN Sports lineup were not as high quality of titles as the competition from EA and Sega.аBrowne said this inаthe interview:

"We actually did think we had good games last year, but the market and the direct feedback that we have shows us that we fall short in a couple of areas to our competition, and we think it's the best thing we can do, to take this year off, and to close that quality gap that we have in respect to the EA Sports and ESPN sports titles. We'll come back in the market with a really strong lineup that does what we need it to do in terms of a first-party sports organization, which is to drive people to buy Xbox and to use our games over Xbox Live."

When pressed for a date on when the XSN Sports titles would resurface, Browne hinted at 2005 at the earliest but said when they can significantly raise the quality of the titles was the most realistic estimate. But he did stress that the current lineup of XSN Sports games will be supported with league play and all of their other Xbox Live options for the forseeable future. "Weаare notаeven thinking of a date to shut it down," he said.

Browne also commented that many of the XSN Sports titles like Amped, Top Spin and Links were never meant to be yearly update titles anyway.

This announcement also puts Microsoft's acquisition of the High Heat Baseball code base into limbo. They had purchased the popular sports series from the 3DO fire sale last year, but nothing has come of it yet and with this new development it's been pushed back indefinitely.

We'll have more on this situation as it's revealed and some commentary from the Gaming Target staff in the coming weeks.