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Microsoft aired its pre-recorded Xbox Showcase June 11 to reveal what’s coming next for the Xbox video game platform.
It included a deep dive into the systems and design of the upcoming Starfield, an exclusive space-opera RPG from Bethesda Softworks; world premieres of new games from first-party Xbox studios like Compulsion Games and inXile; and new trailers for long-awaited Xbox games like Fable, Unavowed, and Hellblade II.
This year’s Xbox Showcase has been anticipated for weeks, with some analysts going so far as to consider it a make-or-break point for Microsoft’s Xbox business.
The news out of Xbox in 2023 is largely mixed so far. The platform has suffered from dead-on-arrival projects like Arkane Studios’ Redfall; offered critically successful but reportedly underselling releases such as Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush; had to deal with organizational issues at 343 Industries, which makes Xbox’s flagship franchise Halo; and seen a slight overall slump in Microsoft’s gaming revenue.
This comes as Sony reports its best year yet for the PlayStation 5, with a sequel to 2018’s Spider-Man coming this holiday season. Nintendo reversed much of its own 2023 slump with extraordinary sales for its May 12 Switch exclusive, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
While Xbox isn’t doing that poorly per the numbers, its competition has fielded several big wins at a time when most of the news for Xbox has been mixed-to-negative. It’s left Xbox looking like the odd company out, and analysts have argued it’s in need of an overall course correction.
If Microsoft agrees with that perspective, it wasn’t in evidence at the 2023 Xbox Showcase. While it did establish a few release dates and had a couple of big reveals, the Showcase further established that the rest of 2023 for Xbox rests on two big releases, Starfield and Forza Motorsport, as well as continuing to add big third-party releases as day-one launches on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.
The bulk of the Showcase, over 45 minutes, was dedicated to Starfield, which releases on Sept. 6, and which is largely considered the hail mary for Xbox’s fiscal year.
The Showcase presentation included a series of extended looks at Starfield’s systems, including combat, exploration, world-building, character creation, its freeform approach, and the ability for the player to extensively customize and crew their own personal starship.
While Bethesda had previously disclosed that Starfield will feature over a thousand worlds that you’re free to explore at your own pace, the Showcase was the first time that its designers discussed the process thereof. Worlds in Starfield are procedurally generated, but are then populated with a variety of handcrafted encounters. No two players will see the same version of Starfield’s galaxy.
Starfield director Todd Howard also revealed that Starfield’s collector’s edition will come with a working smart watch that’s designed to match the official Constellation-brand watch that your character’s given in Starfield. That watch comes in a special hard case like the NASA-derived secure cases that are found in-game, along with an iron-on patch, a steelbook, and a digital download token.
To go along with the game, Xbox will issue an officially-branded Starfield Xbox Series X|S controller and a Starfield-branded wired headset. This marks the first time Xbox has issued a special-edition headset for a game.
The news from Forza Motorsport, the latest entry in Xbox’s long-running series of ultra-realistic racing games, was significantly less intense. Motorsport, now officially scheduled for release on Oct. 10, has officially partnered with General Motors, so players of the game will be able to collect, customize, and drive the 2023 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R and 2024 Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray.
In a surprise announcement, Microsoft will issue a brand new version of its award-winning Flight Simulator next year. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, made in partnership with the French studio Asobo, will feature additional activities such as search and rescue flights, aerial firefighting, hot air ballooning, experimental planes, and running a VIP charter service. No release date was offered.
Xbox’s Phil Spencer briefly took the stage at the end of the Xbox Showcase to announce that “we have heard your feedback.” Microsoft plans to increase the available supply of Xbox Series X units in stores, and will release a new edition of the all-digital Xbox Series S.
This new Series S features a 1-terabyte solid-state drive, up from the 512 GB drive in the current model, and comes in a new color, Carbon Black. It will ship for $349.99 on Sept. 1.
Spencer also raised a few eyebrows by wearing a T-shirt that featured the box art for the 1995 PC game Hexen: Beyond Heretic, created by Raven Software.
In a fully-calculated media event like this one, it’s difficult to imagine that Spencer just rolled out of bed and grabbed that shirt, particularly as Activision Blizzard currently owns Raven Software. It’s entirely possible this was a subtle hint about what’s first on Spencer’s agenda if and when Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard goes through.
In other first-party news for Xbox Game Studios:
- Playground Games’ reboot of the Fable series is officially scheduled for release in 2024, with a new CGI trailer that stars British comedian Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd) as an antagonistic, hero-hating giant.
- Obsidian Entertainment’s first-person fantasy RPG Avowed received a new trailer of its own, which hinted at the lore of the series and established that it’s coming next year.
- Ninja Theory revealed more in-game footage from its forthcoming Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, scheduled for 2024. The original Hellblade was an award-winning 2017 release that used both action and exploration gameplay as metaphors for a struggle with mental illness. Its sequel is planned to continue that story.
- Montreal-based Compulsion Games (We Happy Few) was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 and has been relatively quiet ever since. It broke that silence at the Showcase with a CGI trailer for South of Midnight, a third-person action-adventure game co-written by Zaire Lanier (Subnautica: Below Zero) and set in the supernatural folklore of the American South.
- InXile (Wasteland) revealed its next project at the Showcase. Clockwork Revolution is a first-person steampunk game from the creators of the classic 2001 PC game Arcanum. The city of Avalon has been built into a paradise by its ruler, who’s used a time-travel device to reinforce her power. Your goal is to use the same methods against her, by changing the past to depose a tyrant in the present.
- Xbox Studios will publish Stoic Studio’s TowerBorne, a new cooperative action-RPG, which was made as a lighthearted adventure to contrast with Stoic’s previous project The Banner Saga.
- As a tie-in with the theatrical release of Dune: Part Two in November, players of the current Microsoft Flight Simulator will be able to acquire and fly their own bug-inspired “thopters.”
- Rare’s Sea of Thieves will receive a free update on July 20 that crosses over with the recently-revived adventure series Monkey Island, allowing players to team up for an adventure with Guybrush Threepwood.
To summarize: Xbox’s first-party plans for the rest of this year all rest firmly on Starfield, and to a lesser extent, Forza.
However, 2024 will see Fable, Avowed, Hellblade II, South of Midnight, and a new Microsoft Flight Simulator. If there’s a quiet subtext to this year’s Xbox Showcase, it’s “wait until next year.”
Other reveals at the 2023 Xbox Showcase included:
- Ubisoft revealed a new game in the Star Wars universe, Outlaws, for 2024. As a smuggler in the period of the original trilogy, you’re asked to dodge both the Empire and your debts in pursuit of one last heist.
- Keanu Reeves returned to a Microsoft stage to officially reveal the first major expansion for Cyberpunk 2077, called Phantom Liberty. Co-starring Idris Elba (The Wire), PL sends players into the slums of Dogtown on an urgent mission to rescue the President of the New United States. It’s planned for release on Sept. 26. CP2077 is based on the tabletop roleplaying game of the same name by Kirkland, Wash.-based R. Talsorian Games.
- The team behind the popular Persona series of Japanese RPGs announced its first trip into a fantasy setting with Metaphor: ReFantazio, a 2024 game where a random traveler gets pulled into a quest to save a kingdom.
- Speaking of Persona, a full remake of 2006’s Persona 3 will land on Xbox in 2024, and a brand-new strategy-based spinoff, Persona 5 Tactica, is coming out on Nov. 17.
- The Chinese Room, creators of Dear Esther, revealed a new game, Still Wakes the Deep, a narrative horror game set on a sinking oil rig in 1975. Players must survive inclement weather, the rig’s crumbling structure, and an unknown entity that seems to have crawled aboard.
- The next destination for Bethesda’s Fallout 76 is post-apocalyptic Atlantic City, as efforts to reclaim the post-nuclear war northeastern US advance as far as New Jersey.
- Players of Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 will receive five free playable characters in Aug. with a subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
Xbox Game Pass releases for the rest of 2023 include Payday 3 (Sept. 21) and Cities: Skylines II (10/24), in addition to Starfield and Forza Motorsport.
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