We’ve known that Microsoft has been planning some kind of games blowout ahead of the release of their upcoming next-generation Xbox Series X console, and now they’ve pinned down an exact date and time. Microsoft’s announcement proclaims “See the Future of Xbox on July 23 on the Xbox Games Showcase”, and we’re expecting to see updates on the projects that all their first-party studios are working on.
What to expect?
Microsoft has said that this will be a one hour stream, entirely focussed on games. There’s not going to be any hardware news, just one hour showcasing their upcoming games lineup. The stream will be in 1080p/60hz, but there will be a high-quality 4k/60hz version made available after the initial broadcast.
I know everyone is excited for Xbox Games Showcase next Thursday. Seen some wild expectations so if helpful this show has one focus, games. No business, devices or similar news, just games. A whole show about hour long focused on games. Hope you enjoy it! https://t.co/eIPBsJtLbJ
— Aaron Greenberg 🙅🏼♂️💚U (@aarongreenberg) July 16, 2020
Even those of us with zero interest in buying an Xbox should be paying attention to this stream. Microsoft is a major publisher of PC games now, and we can likely expect most if not all of their lineup to be hitting PC/Steam going forward. They might just be focusing on selling their upcoming console with this stream, but we’ll probably be able to play all these games on PC too.
It’s going to be interesting to see exactly how they massage the messaging surrounding their decision to continue supporting Xbox One with their upcoming games lineup. In a post on the Xbox blog, Phil Spencer reiterated that all these games will be on Xbox One too:
“We want every Xbox player to play all the new games from Xbox Game Studios. That’s why Xbox Game Studios titles we release in the next couple of years—like Halo Infinite—will be available and play great on Xbox Series X and Xbox One. We won’t force you to upgrade to Xbox Series X at launch to play Xbox exclusives.”
We’ll see if this strategy of reducing the friction between this generational transition works out for then. It’s great for owners of existing systems, but could it end up compromising their games as they’re held back by aged hardware? We’ll have to wait and see.
The games we might see
Halo Infinite
We know for sure that there will be the first proper showcasing of Halo Infinite, the much anticipated next title in the long-running shooter series. It’s perhaps significant that it’s not called Halo 6, which could perhaps hint towards the series going in some kind of new direction. Microsoft will no doubt want this to be a game that can have a long life ahead of it, so perhaps we’ll see some kind of deviation from the traditional finite linear campaign plus deathmatch multiplayer. If I were a betting man, I’d perhaps say elements like a more open-world design, and some kind of large scale battle royale style multiplayer could be on the cards, although hopefully whatever direction they go in would have some kind of strong idea behind it, rather than simply chasing trends.
Forza
Forza is in a somewhat strange place, where the on/off rhythm of a Forza Motorsport one year and then a Forza Horizon the next year has been broken for the first time since 2011. We had the excellent Forza Horizon 4 in 2018, but there’s been no releases (aside from a throwaway mobile game) since then. Both Forza Horizon 4 and 2017’s Forza Motorsport 7 had substantial post-release support, so perhaps that and preparing for the new console is what caused the shift in the release schedule. Since the series started on the original Xbox, Microsoft has always had a Forza game available for the launch of a new console, so we’re sure that will be true here too. Turn 10 is the studio that maintains the Forza game engine, and develop Forza Motorsport, whereas Playground games use the Forza engine provided by Turn 10 to make the Forza Horizon games. I could either see a big new entry in the Motorsport series making the most sense for launch, since it would be a good opportunity for Turn 10 to update the engine to take advantage of the new hardware, and track-based racing games at 60fps are usually excellent showcases of that new hardware.
Playground Games
Playground Games, in addition to the Forza Horizon games, have created a second team to work on an entirely different project. Widely speculated to be a Forza reboot, we do at least know it is an open world RPG. The studio would make a lot of sense to tackle the reboot of a prestigious series like Fable, their work on the Forza Horizon series has probably been the most consistently on schedule and up to standard work of any Microsoft first-party over the last decade, and being a British studio, they’d hopefully nail the tone of the prerequisite British humor better than a studio from elsewhere in the world.
The Coalition
This is the Gears of War studio. If they’re working on something, it’ll be Gears of War related. Probably a little too soon to hear anything about a new mainline entry in the series, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard more about their plans to upgrade Gears 5 with some of the graphical features that were previously only available on the PC version. Perhaps they’ll be updating some of the earlier games in the series too.
Rare
You can never quite tell what to expect from Rare. We’ve recently seen Sea of Thieves with a new lease of life thanks to the Steam release, so maybe they will have some kind of update for that to showcase. I also wouldn’t be too surprised to hear some classic Rare IP returning, even if it was developed by another studio like with Killer Instinct or the upcoming Battletoads.
Mojang
Minecraft 2? Probably not, but maybe we’ll see some kind of update for Minecraft that takes advantage of the new hardware. Minecraft sold very well on the Xbox 360 and on the Xbox One, it’s not hard to imagine it doing the same again for another generation of consoles.
Ninja Theory
Hopefully, there will be footage shown of their upcoming Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga, which was one of the first Xbox Series X games announced. It’s unlikely that they’d be working on two projects targeting the launch period for the Xbox Series X, but perhaps not impossible.
The Initiative
Big question mark here, since this is a new studio yet to release anything. Perhaps they could be helming a project based on some existing ip, perhaps Perfect Dark? Or maybe they are working on something completely new.
The Rest
Microsoft has also made a bunch of different studio acquisitions, all of them interesting studios behind games with a strong identity. It might be time for us to start hearing from the likes of Obsidian, Inexile, Double Fine, and other studios that Microsoft has acquired. Some of these studios have already announced projects in development, but maybe we can expect a couple of teases from them too.
We’ll be keeping an eye out for all the big games news out of this showcase. Let us know if there’s anything, in particular, you hope to see.