Rumour: Xbox Might Be Planning 'Some Kind Of Event' For Early 2023

A little disappointing is an understatement. It was very bad. They’ve got 6 months to release Starfield, Forza and Redfall. I’m skeptical they all make it, which would be another stick in the fire for promises broken.

I recon it'll be a big starfield and Redfall thing and have a bunch of stuff that's due out before e3

I doubt the release dates are firm enough to lock in right now. I think they are trying to avoid a public delay at all costs. I wouldn't be surprised if they hold release dates until close to the actual release from now on.

I honestly just want them to shut up promising “the best year for Xbox” year after year, and just deliver some games, it’s still unbelievable to me how we haven’t got ANY single game that was in the 2020 showcase other than Halo Infinite (and we see how that went), even if they closed the acquisition of ABK Xbox will never be the market leader if they keep not releasing any games…

They were probably planning on dropping CoD and Diablo onto Game Pass by the time this event happened, and now they can talk about Grounded 1.1 instead.

@Somebody games like ff16 have release dates in June. so you would hope MS could announce one of the 3.

create some excitement heading into 23

If they do have an event early 2023 I hope they do more than just showcase Redfall and Starfield. I am super excited for both of those games but I would like to have a taste of what 2024 or even 2025 has in store. Where is Fable or Perfect Dark?

@NEStalgia To be fair, Grounded 1.1 is a fantastic update 😉

@stvevan we will see if final fantasy makes their date, Starfield had a release date once too. Another public delay would be devastating for them. I think MS learned from Sony and nintendo that if you don't announce a firm date until you are very confident then you can avoid some of the backlash of an official delay. They also learned from Halo and cyberpunk not to rush a release.

Maybe you can also avoid devs leaking to the press that there will either be serious crunch or a delay like the diablo 4 devs 7 months away from their release date. It's a lose lose for them, if they make their date then everyone will assume there was awful crunch.

@FatalBubbles i don't know if delays should be characterized as broken promises. That implies that they are deliberately lying about when it will come. I think there is a difference between failing to meet your goal and lying.

We have seen how desperate some games have been to hit their release lately when they sell us a broken mess. I would call those more of a broken promise than a game being delayed from when they had hoped to be finished.

@Sebatrox I’m not talking about PlayStation I’m talking about Xbox, every game of their 2020 showcase has gone more time without releasing than most of the examples you gave (with the exception of TLOU 2), if those were mere concepts back then, why show them at all?

And while Sony has done the same things they’ve released a bunch of other games to fill the gaps, say what you want about Sony (there’s plenty to criticize) but they haven’t gone a full year without releasing a banger exclusive…

@Sakisa Grounded gets the honor of being the centerpiece of more E3 presentations than Pikmin 4.

@IOI It was more than obvious, and I don't think they claimed otherwise that most of that 2020 showcase were concepts. The one trailer (Outer Worlds 2) even made fun of the fact in the trailer itself that it was nothing but a concept trailer. I knew when I watched that presentation we were looking at the games from the LATE XSX life cycle, probably 2025 onward, not anything in the near future. But then again I'm a multiplat gamer that went through the same show in 2012 with WiiU and 2014 with PS4, so I kind of already knew what to expect from that. Even Switch 2017 highlighted games that have only come out in the past year. I really just expect console launch showcases to be showing tentpoles they don't expect for 5-6 years. PS5 presentation was kind of unique actually in that it only showed stuff they expected in the next year (turned out to be 2.5 but still ahead of normal.) Although every game they showed was actually a PS4 game, so that made things easier compared to other launches.

@Somebody FF16 is probably mostly done since they've been working on it for probably 6 years or so, the director is a veteran FF director with a solid MMO under his belt, and the game, lets face it, looks like a linear DMC game with FF artwork and not an RPG at all, with the combat director from actual DMC in charge. From what little we do know it's basically a "really big Bayonetta game with FF pretension." Shouldn't take as long to make as an actual RPG.

(Disclaimer, I'm a huge FF fan and I'm not sure I have an interest in 16. I like FF, I like DMC, I like Bayonetta, I don't think I like them being the same game. It's like a hybrid of FIFA and Battlefield in one game.)

@Sebatrox To be fair, MS's track record is a little different:
Scalebound - E3 2016. Released - ????
Halo Infinite - E3 2017. Released - 2021. Kinda.
Crackdown 3 - E3 2014. Released (wish it hadn't)

Fingers crossed they annoucne something for January or February, and we get those dates on Starfield and Redfall, Forza too.

@Somebody It’s hard for me to side with MS if they miss the release dates they said in their presentation a year ago. They had a list of a ton of games that would be released by June 2023. They’ve repeatedly not released games and said next year will be the year. Broken promises, mismanagement, etc. We can call it whatever but it’s getting old regardless.

@Sebatrox LOL, I had Deep Down in my original list and then removed it to keep it first party only...but...yeah. There's also Killzone 2 if we want to go with major historical disappointments on the Sony side, and (not really their fault) the whole Watch_Dogs debacle.

If they were serious about releasing Forza Motorsport, Redfall and Starfield at the first half of 2023, as implied in last E3, they definitely need to have a showcase early next year.

@FatalBubbles i think they will release. Forza in late January early February is my guess, RedFall in march or April and May or June for Starfield, which gives all 3 games a little time to shine and get played on GP before the other drops. That the smart play for a subscription. Every 5-6 weeks after players get bored give another title to keep engagement high for the service. Something they know didn’t happen for 2022. The only thing i can’t even begin to take a stab at is what will the back half of 2023 have? Maybe HellBlade 2? Contraband? Or do they have surprises? Sure is an exciting time to be a Xbox gamer cause they can’t let this strategy just fall on its face. This is their game plan and they have to deliver or they are finished.

It's a shame they aren't planning any decent exclusives

@Action_Nad but they are planning ton’s of big exclusives and they aren’t cross gen so they will be fully current gen games, which take a little longer, especially coming off the pandemic. Not trying to make excuses for them, but they do have stuff planned and it just missed its target dates.

@FatalBubbles
I think they were hoping we had forgotten that statement 😂

They better have a show in Jan/Feb. Did they pull a bunch of stuff from the game awards for their show? Or we're they never going to show anything there? Why send all your execs to the show with nothing?

Almost don’t even care anymore.

What is an unverifiable rumor? An idea so tentative there is no way to confirm it? By confirming it, it is fundamentally changed? I guess once a rumor is confirmed, it becomes a fact... Or, is this just pure conjecture? Don't get me wrong, I love reading these articles (no sarcasm, it's why I read these sites), but this wording just struck me as particularly odd hedging.

@FatalBubbles their goal was stated as by June 2023. You shouldn't take a release date as some sworn oath. At least that's my mentality. I won't feel any betrayal if one or all of them miss the time frame.

@Somebody I guess when they say, “these game are all releasing in the next 12 months”, we just ignore that. If you’re all for giving them free passes forever, that’s cool. I just can’t get behind that when they failed to release a single game this year.

@Green-Bandit You think they are releasing a game in 5-7 weeks and we haven’t heard anything? I’m think they get two of these out by June. In terms of back half of 2023, surely Hellblade 2 has to be close? It’s been in development for what seems like 100 years.

All of the games

@FatalBubbles if the post covid era has taught us anything, it is that some games aren't going to hit the arbitrary date they set as a goal. In some cases they have released the games as is and fixed them as they went. That is a strategy i hope MS never does again. When you hear "all these games are going to release in the next 12 months" you should probably think that is just a goal.

I feel like seeing dozens of games (spanning all publishers) miss their dates over the last 2 years should have us more prepared for this type of thing.

And I'm not saying the games are going to be delayed I'm just thinking they don't want to tell us the date until they are confident in one they can hit.

It should always be considered a possibility that the games will be delayed whether it was a real date or a vague timeline given.

@Somebody None of what you said is wrong. That’s not even what we are talking about. The main point is, MS is unable to release games, like at all. They’ve released Halo, FH5, Flight Simulator and ??? this generation. They have 1000 studios, something has to change.

Why is it on here, when some one and rightly so mentions Xbox and their lack of AAA in house studio releases, which currently is terrible.
And they do so without mentioning Sony.

The Xbox excuse defence league show up letting them off the hook and bring Sony into it.

@Green-Bandit There's still FH5 Expansion 2 in the mix, I really doubt Motorsport is releasing before that and we know expansion 2 isn't releasing until February at the earliest given both the December and January Series have already been detailed. Also the E3 trailer said Spring 2023 for Motorsport.

@Dezzy70 because Sony is the big bad monster, so it has to be their fault.

Phil can do no wrong

@stvevan
I mean I don’t like both companies that much and the one that is releasing the big AAA games I like, I spend my money on. Simple as that really.
They both have their faults, well all three do being honest.

@FatalBubbles i mean thats a good point, i sure wish MS would just give us some dates and take the guessing game out of it. Unless these titles are just not close enough to complete to lock in a target date. But you make sense against what i said. So i really can’t even guess at this anymore without looking bad. Haha

@Grumblevolcano thats a good point, they better hope RedFall is pretty far along cause they need some titles out before June, cause FF16 and Diablo 4 are going to be time consuming games that won’t give time for new a IP. Sure wish MS would help us take some of the guessing game away.

@Green-Bandit I think we can agree that we just want some games to actually release. 😕

@FatalBubbles you said it!! I want a Flood of games to hit in 2023-2024 and i still think they will, i just hope they are fun, polished and ready to be played. Xbox is and always will be my main place to game. But i have the other two consoles also and only use them for their exclusives. So it’s not like i am going to give up on Xbox if they only have a few exclusives, but with all those studios they are bound to have games and a few gems one would hope.

Regarding the lack of news about Starfield, Redfall and Forza, and the worry that causes that they might not hit the release dates before June 23; a recent example of this is God of War Ragnarok. Sony was really quiet about the game in the lead up to the launch which for sure raised suspicions as to whether it would get delayed (again) or not yet it still got released and was successful.

I know this is Xbox were talking about, so yeaaaa I can understand the doubt haha, but it’s not a complete write-off yet. Plus I think Phil knows he’s got to deliver the goods now. He seems increasingly frustrated at the lack of releases.

Maybe we can at least hope for 2 of the 3?

If they show only games for this year I would like to see it. Showing vaporware.... I am not interested.

Screw this, I'm just getting a PC XD

Still amazing that a trillion dollar company with 23 first party Studios (more than any company in history) released 0 AAA games in a entire calendar year.

We are now officially over 2 years since the release of Xbox Series consoles and so far they've made a grand total of 2 (Halo and Forza) console exclusive triple A games. 4 if you count Psychonauts 2 and Deathloop which are also available on competitor console.

Meanwhile Playstation with far fewer studios has released, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Astros Playroom, Sackboy Big Adventure, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, Returnal, Horizon Forbidden West, Gran Turismo, God of War Ragnarok, and has also tied huge games with exclusivity deals to the console such as Forspoken and Final Fantasy 16. Not to mention quality indie games like Kena, Sifu and Stray.

At the end of the day its a you get what you pay for situations. Xbox gives you a cheap subscription service that has decent games every other month, whereas Playstation hardly ever releases a bad game and asks £70 a piece.

@Dezzy70 let's face it Xbox has been seriously lame in 2022. They still had a decent 2021 but they did release a console with 0 Exclusives.

You can't really argue with what Playstation has released in the last 2 years, the quality is at a completely different level. Just look at what they've achieved with GOW Ragnarok.

I think Xbox will eventually release a few Exclusives in 2023 but I think the quality will be missing. I mean did Starfield honestly look like anything special?

I'm not holding my breath but I could see them doing something to showcase more of starfield redfall Forza and others. But who really knows I just hope those games are as good as their promise to be and I could care less showcase they do as long as those games are good I'll be happy.

@Chaudy
Funny that I was playing GOWR last night and looked across at my series x and thought in the right hands and all those Xbox owned ip and the power of the series x imagine what some Xbox ip games could look and play like.
Say Halo etc.
Then thought we will probably never see an Xbox ip new or old with GOWR production values.
Such a shame really but I do still hope we will.

And yes Starfield and its main planets should look even better than say HFW but they won’t.
Most Xbox studios just don’t have Sony studio production values.

I’m all ready for the Xbox excuse brigade, don’t bother I have heard all the excuses a million times before on here. And they are all getting old a boring like Phil’s game promises.

Hopefully this is a decent year for Xbox, I suppose all we can do is hope that they release a reasonable amount of games. Which is hindsight is a possibility. 3 games for sure, it's just when they are released. This year on PS, we have basically seen 4 major exclusives (one a remake) so if MS can aim for 4 spread throughout the year and some filler games, then I'm sure that's a good aim.

They also said in September GoldenEye was coming 'soon'.

@themightyant yeah I agree with that, fair comment. I did enjoy the indie titles, personal favs from this year: As Dusk Falls, TMNT, Midnight Fight Express and Prodeus.

They need to announce something. I'm waiting for SOD3. I mean come on. You did a trailer in 2020. There must be something to show. Even if it is Pre-Alpha scripted gameplay. Just a glimpse of what they are actually working on. I actually bought a new Xbox specifically for it.