Microsoft wants us to know its first-party titles are coming. We just don't know when.
NotE3 season is in full swing. Despite the demise of the once-unmissable trade show, June remains chock full of video game announcements. Over the weekend, Microsoft followed Geoff Keighley's annual Summer Game Fest bonanza with its own 2024 Xbox Game Showcase.
As was the case last year, the company stuffed its digital expo with trailers and reveals spotlighting the work of its first-party Xbox Game Studios family. Notably, this was the first Xbox Game Showcase following Microsoft's merger with Activision Blizzard, and that allowed the company to unveil Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on its own terms and tout the fact it'll be heading to "select Xbox Game Pass plans" on day one.
The company pitched other first-party projects like Avowed, Age of Mythology: Retold, Doom: The Dark Ages, Fable, Gears of War: E-Day, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Flight Simulator 2024, Perfect Dark, South of Midnight, and State of Decay 3.
It's an impressive platter, on paper, but it's still unclear when exactly many of those projects will actually launch. Age of Mythology: Retold is slated to debut on September 4, 2024, and Flight Simulator 2024 will arrive on November 19.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which only recently became first-party fodder, will touch down on October 25. We then have tentative '2024' release dates for Avowed and Indiana Jones, and the promise of '2025' launches for South of Midnight, Fable, and Doom: The Dark Ages. As for the rest, who knows?
It's not uncommon for projects to be announced years before they come out, but it feels like Microsoft needs its first-party plans to start coalescing sooner rather than later. The company has just laid off 1,900 employees and shuttered studios including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, the latter of which only recently delivered what felt like a huge win in Hi-Fi Rush. Those decisions were made just months after spending $68.7 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard.
It's not that Microsoft doesn't have solid first-party offerings out there. Pentiment, Grounded, Sea of Thieves, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, Forza Motorsport, Forza Horizon 5, and Starfield no doubt have their fans, but there remains a sense of expectancy surrounding the company because of its flagrant spending and decision making in recent years.
The latest Xbox Game Showcase is packed with promise, but with concrete release dates thin on the ground and Xbox leadership coming under increasing scrutiny, it remains to be seen whether that much-needed big win is around the corner.
You can catch-up on all the Xbox Game Showcase 2024 news over on Xbox Wire.
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