At Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, one could get the unmistakable impression that Xbox is banking heavily on 2024 Explained, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and more. It sounded a lot like Xbox’s grand strategy for 2022: bet everything on 2023. So how did that turn out?
Following the Xbox Games Showcase 2022, Microsoft claims on Twitter that “in the next 12 months” 50 games would be released on Xbox and PC. The list was a grab bag – a mix of new first- and third-party games, Game Pass perks, Xbox ports of already-released titles (like Valheim) and updates to ongoing live service games (like Hello infinity).
Many of the games cited by Xbox did come out during that 12 month window. Some of the third-party tent poles – below diablo 4plus the Empty room And Resident Evil 4 Remakes – were instant commercial and critical successes. Some were met with varying but generally mediocre staying power: Gotham Knights, Somerville, Wo Long: The Fallen Dynasty, High on Life, Atomic Heart. First party rate? Uh, we don’t have to talk about first-party rates (Hello, redfall).
Of the total list of 50 games, 12 are yet to be released and only three currently have firm release dates:
- light year limit
- party animals (now scheduled for September 20th)
- starfield (now scheduled for September 6th)
- Forza Motorsport (now scheduled for Oct. 10)
- flintlock
- ark 2
- Ara: Untold story
- Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
- STALKER 2
- replaced
- Ereban: Shadow Legacy
- cocoon
replaced And STALKER 2 are being developed by studios based in Ukraine, which has been embroiled in a war against Russian aggressors since February 2022. cocoon should be displayed during the Annapurna Interactive Showcasescheduled for June 29th. ark 2 stars Vin Diesel (and, more importantly, has been pushed back to 2024). The rest are marked as “coming soon” or vaguely “2023”.
After today’s showcase, Microsoft took a different path than last year. Instead of providing an exact timeline for the upcoming plan, it is instead tweeted that the Xbox Showcase series 2023 “brings the first game day”.
