While Sony claims that the PS5 can make a developer’s life a bit easier, it looks like Microsoft or the Xbox Team is looking to make “AAAA” titles for the Xbox Series X. The latest studio created under the green brand, The Initiative, has taken up Erik Jakosen — a former SIE Santa Monica senior staff environment artist on God of War.

Whether you prefer to call The Initiative a “Quad-A” studio or “AAAA” studio, this team will be making games with big-budgets behind them, I’m guessing, that will utilize talent across well-known studios.

Publication site windowscentral.com reports that The Initiative is Microsoft’s latest studio that is to create “quality experiences.” Expect the usual current year tropes given that the studio resides in Santa Monica, California.

Speaking of Sony Santa Monica, Jakobsen isn’t the only person to join The Initiative in that early this year, God of War’s senior staff level designer Chris O’Neill made the leap from Sony to Microsoft’s latest studio.

I’m not sure how this whole thing will pan out in the coming future, given that the Xbox Team isn’t always known to produce “big games” that work — much like Crackdown 3.

Anyway, we also don’t know what this game will be like, given that very little information is out in the wild. However, seeing that Microsoft is poaching or selecting talent from its rivaling blue brand could indicate that the Xbox Team is serious about “competing” next-gen as per videogameschronicle.com.

The real questions that remain unanswered are, will these future next-gen games regress despite appearing on more “powerful” hardware? Will we see more games that boast colorful-childish graphics? And will more social justice nonsense plague these future games along with bugs and microtransactions? Because if so, I can’t see new IPs going woke and not going broke.

Anyway, what’s known right now is that Microsoft’s The Initiative is picking up talent from Sony and is presumably working on a game that’s “AAAA” quality.