The year of Xbox in 2018 has been almost Jekyll-and-Hyde-ian. Software-wise, the lack of high-quality first-party exclusives continues to be the story. But hardware and services were unrivaled, and Microsoft tripled their first-party studio portfolio.\n<\/p>\n
On 2018’s final episode of Unlocked, our Xbox crew talks about Microsoft’s interesting year.\u00a0Watch the video above to see them break down the highs and lows of Xbox’s 2018.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Xbox had the sublime Forza Horizon 4, an IGN Game of the Year nominee<\/a>. Somehow, Forza Horizon 4 improved<\/a> an already brilliant series,\u00a0bringing changing seasons along for the ride \u2013 and doing so successfully.\u00a0Visually it (again somehow) evolved again, especially if you played it on an Xbox One X. Aside from that, though (and that didn’t release until October), it was an underwhelming year. Sea of Thieves released in a skeletal form<\/a> in March, offering a genuinely enthralling core concept that, at launch, didn’t have much meat on its bones. It has, to its credit, already received several substantial content updates. Meanwhile, State of Decay 2 dropped in May, evolving<\/a> the original’s unique brand of role-playing zombie-apocalypse survival, but unfortunately retaining the first game’s reputation of being a shoddy technical experience.\n<\/p>\n Continue reading\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n Powered by WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The year of Xbox in 2018 has been almost Jekyll-and-Hyde-ian. Software-wise, the lack of high-quality first-party exclusives continues to be the story. But hardware and services were unrivaled, and Microsoft tripled their first-party studio portfolio. On 2018’s final episode of Unlocked, our Xbox crew talks about Microsoft’s interesting year.\u00a0Watch the video above to see them… Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games-media","category-gaming"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t