I meant for 2018 and beyond naturally, the 2017 lineup is already well known. In the style of Quantum Break, Crackdown and such where it's a third party studio working on either a Microsoft IP or an entirely new one. If there aren't, then we can basically guess at the entire Microsoft output through to Holiday 2019, which will be "Another Halo, Two Forzas, Another Gears, and 2-4 small games".
We only know 2018 with SOT, SOD, CD3 and tentative ORI 2, FH4 and H6. Anything beyond that we have no clue.
343 and The Coalition seem to be 1.5 game studios - able to do a bit of remastering or helping out another studio on the side while they work on their big game. But unless there's been a hiring spree (which I don't think we've heard about), I can't see them having 2 large games in full development simultaneously. Turn 10 and Playground are always on the Forza train. Rare will by busy with the launch and postgame support for Sea of Thieves, although they probably can start developing something on the side while that's going on. Mojang is Mojang.
While recently there has actually been a hiring spree for all first party studios with Rare for almost the whole year and last, I don't think in the case of Coalition or 343 they will being doing 2 games at once unless it's a HW2 (spinoff) or remaster type game with a outside studio. In terms of Rare we know they have been working on something else for a while, It will probably go into full production after SOT releases as that already has a Live team being formed to handle the content required of a GAAS.
The only place I can really see surprises coming from then are third party contracts. Halo Wars 2 was a collaboration with Creative Assembly/Sega and 343 industries. Recore is a collaboration with Armature/Comcept. Crackdown 3 is a collaboration with like 12563463 different studios for various things apparently.
This has been the reality of how MS has been handling first party investment for awhile, which has been a big point of contention in this thread. In terms of how first party is set up all MS owned studios report to Phil, while another division headed by Shannon Loftis which is were all new first party investment appears to be coming from rather than an expansion in MS studios. Shannon Loftis's division MS global publishing handles working with all outside studios from Iron Galaxy (KI) to Undead Labs (SOD), basically we can't tell anything about what her division is doing and haven't known about any of those projects before they announce them due to their external nature. We know Shannon Loftis's division announced they are working with Studio Gobo which we couldn't of guessed, apparently it's a triple AAA UE4 project with some thinking it might be Fable reusing Fable Legends based on some info. But we do know that since that was announced Gobo has been hiring a lot very quickly.
In terms of Playground games a leak of a hiring for a MS first party UK based AAA Open world game that is similar in nature to HZD in terms of environment art, has been linked to PG in someways. With this lining up to PG's second new studio and open world none racing game project that we now know ruffly after the time of that hiring leak according to their website is a shooter. This project would go through Shannon's division, but Forza Horizon doesn't. So this is were how first party is arranged gets a bit harder to tell whats going on, projects like Halo wars 2, Forza Horizon or Rare Replay go through the First party studios themselves and not Shannon. So it would be hard to find out if Rare contracts out one of its IP with a outside developers for example, because the ways we usually find out are through job postings etc which makes it a lot harder when it seems most of the time it's an obscure studio were it's like picking a needle out of a haystack.
Looking at the current slate of known Microsoft games coming out, there are only two explanations - either they really are winding down first party support to the bare, profitable minimum, or there was a reorganisation that led to several cancellations and a gap in their lineup before new projects were ready for announcement and shipping. I hope it's the latter, but have there been any leaks hinting towards this? Do we have any rumblings that there's stuff in the works we'll be excited about?
We know there was a restructuring in terms of first party studios from Phil himself but wether that means we will see more investment due to that is an unknown until we see it. But in terms of other projects we know from Phil himself that before E3 this year he signed 3 different first party projects, we don't know if these are first party studio based or more than likely Shannon's division. We also don't know if there was more before this or not as he was just giving an example to show that they are investing in first party, while also saying they don't want to show things of early even tho they could with those games being examples. Some people think we may see AOE4 announced at Gamescom based on wording, but thats an unknown we will find out on 21st. AOE remastered is Shannon's division as likely would be an AOE4 unless Decisive games a first party studio they open in 2015 is still around, as they were created to fill the gap ensemble left and take up AOE and RON which had been purchased for a strategy focus Phil talked about. That's about all I can think of off the top of my head.