Halo Wars 2, Crackdown 3, State of Decay 2. All sequels to games that are not mega-successes. It's not like MS have officially declared Sunset Overdrive dead, but it makes sense that it's not on top of Microsoft list of games with all the other sequels coming. We also know that a sequel to Alan Wake is in the works and that ReCore will probably be back.
Sunset Overdrive can still happen, it's not like the IP is that old.
Your post is a great encapsulation of the problem here.
Halo Wars 2 - The first was a well rated and fairly solid (>1M copies) sales spin off of a flagship franchise. After it's release they closed Ensemble, one of the best RTS studios in the industry. The sequel was outsourced to Creative Assembly and by most accounts is a pretty solid game, but after taking a ~7 year break between 1 and 2, and not even willing to fund an internal studio for the sequel, it's hard to see MS as real committed to continuing HW.
Crackdown 3 - took so long to greenlight #2 despite massive cult success on the X360 that the studio had signed another deal (to make Brink). So 2 was made by a mostly unrelated studio and it showed. Now they roll it out again with yet a third team (though having a few people from the first apparently) years later. Way to develop that IP.
State of Decay 2 - The first was a low cost XBLA risk that found far more success than they'd expected. Stepping up for 2 is a good move, they definitely deserve some credit there.
Also, how do we know that a sequel to Alan Wake is in the works? All the interviews before Quantum Break talked about how they scrapped AW2 while putting some of the concepts into American Nightmare because MS wanted something new. Even if they do move forward with it, how in the world was it a good strategy to shelf the IP for this wander in the wilderness period?
This is a big part of the problem here. Hell, MS brought back Killer Instinct and now Phantom Dust. They view anything outside the big three as nothing more than a lure to the hardcore gamer they need to throw out periodically, not something worth building up.
That makes the future of SO especially uncertain because Insomniac isn't waiting around for MS and it's Insomniac's IP. Eventually MS' rights of refusal expire and Insomniac can do whatever they want.
Sitting on IPs for nearly a decade between iterations is not servicing those IPs well. Sony had Insomniac push out three Resistance games and had Bend make a PSP game on the franchise all within the PS3's lifespan in an attempt to built the IP, though without success. They did the same with Uncharted to great success, seeing a huge breakthrough in sales with the sequels. Same with transitioning Sucker Punch from Sly to Infamous.
But that's because Sony maintains a non-trivial stable of internal studios working on new things. MS has their Forza, Gears, Halo studios and then looks to contract out everything else. An odd software development strategy for the world's largest software company if they're truly interested in video games production, but their strategy all the same.
