Xbox Event Reportedly Set For Late January, First Details Revealed

This is going to be a fascinating year. It's either the year that the floodgates open actual 1st party games hit the shelf, or it could legitimately be the year Xbox goes over the cliff...

With the missed opportunity at the game awards it would be nice to have some info on upcoming games.

I know a little off topic but when are game pass games for the month are typically revealed? Feels like it's been a while since I've heard of additions

Keep the expectations low. E3 will still be the big news event. If they do have a show it will likely be release dates for 1st half games and developer interviews. Maybe a couple gamepass announcements. If they don't quell expectations beforehand it might be just as bad as not having a show. I kinda think they should just drop each release trailer and developer interview separately in social media posts.

I really don't think MS is any rush to show anything that isn't released in next few months and has an absolutely concrete street date.

It's almost becoming a meme of nothing now but "soon" only to be followed by a delay announcement that has gotten them so much heat lately.

They better keeping quiet until something is ready to drop imho.

I think because of the Activision acquisition, Microsoft won't have an event. The silence on the Xbox front since the FTC made their move (e.g. absence at the Game Awards, no 2nd half of December Game Pass batch, approaching no 1st half of January Game Pass batch) doesn't seem like a coincidence.

Xbox at the moment are the dullest of all three main consoles.
There is a big but, if they produce the AAA and they are good, release them in good order in 2023, communicate, PR etc. Then that changes instantly. A bit like 2022, yet so near, but yet so far.

@Grumblevolcano
And if Microsoft didn’t have the business sense to work that out, then they need to go crawl back under their rock.

MS has to be aware of the rumors circulating regarding this "showcase event." If they didn't have anything planned, you'd think they would say so. If this month comes and goes without a peep from them neither confirming nor denying, I think it would look worse than just saying they don't have anything planned.

Windows central is revealing a "developer direct" showcase on jan 25th, games expected are Redfall, Forza, and Minecraft Legends

Interested to see more Redfall at least if the rumor pans out.

If Jez is the source then i cant believe any of this. Everything he says is generally fabricated to hype the platform

Didn't Larry say something about "not having to wait long" for more information or something post-TGA no-show? Sounds like they're definitely planning some sort of information release in the early year here.

Though this says it's a Direct (which MS has never done before) and other things said an XO style show. I think they're going to save a big blowout for E3, because Microsoft has really benefited from sticking to the old E3 format and having the spotlight to themselves and controlling the conversation in June, and this year "proper" E3 is back with a bigger ReedPop convention format.

@Somebody " I kinda think they should just drop each release trailer and developer interview separately in social media posts."

Please no, I'm so sick of the whole "drop news in social media". I view that as "not having info at all, and waiting to hear about it re-posted somewhere 3 years later while searching for a walkthrough on how to beat the last boss."

@Dezzy70 @Widey85 @Grumblevolcano Some of it is radio silence, but I think part of it was the plan was already put together to be dumping a ton of Activision stuff on GP at this point, and the TGA announcement was probably set to be Diablo 4 for January or something like that, or legacy content or something, and then the unexpected and unhinged FTC politics halted all the plans and left them scrambling with nothing. Can't just hammer out 3rd party get contracts in a month. Nobody expected the FTC to do that because it's just legally unfounded. If they were not a government agency, they'd be counter-sued for tortuous interference. They filed a lawsuit with no basis or precedent on spurious grounds, tied to their own internal court to stall it as long as possible, for the sole purpose of interfering with a business and tying up tens of billions of dollars. I really doubt anyone saw that coming within MS or ABK because it's an unusual low even for US government.

But the intentional silence is part of it too....Sony's doing it too even worse. Nothing since the E3 time event. No Fall event people expected, no GoW event, not even a rumor of a 2023 event. I mean they've been silent since the end of the PS4, but they've reached an all new level of silence now. Having no event for what's probably their biggest non-Disney licensed release of the generation says it all. They're playing the role of poor little failing business deserving government protection from big bad competitors.

I want to see more of Redfall so this sounds good.

@NEStalgia
Just so glad Nintendo are not involved and we get what probably will be the greatest game of this year in May 2023, even this decade.

@uptownsoul
That’s another point, firstly when are they releasing in 2023.
But the expectation of big quality AAA games.
Don’t get me wrong Sony and Nintendo delay as well, GOWR and BOTW2 but one has definitely delivered and I think BOTW2 will.
If Xbox reach the dizzy heights of either of those games, then I will be truly surprised, but delighted in the same breath.

Why wouldn't Starfield be at the show?? I think this a bad sign that Starfield will be pushed to a holiday 2022 game.. If they're not gonna to announce it here when the hell are they gonna announce it??

Good. Hopefully the first of a few this year.

@NEStalgia people will hold this "direct" to the same standards as every other showcase from all platforms. There will be articles, youtube video, and polls all looking to grade this show, looking to compare it to every nintendo direct and PS show. If this is just a scenario of them trying to get the dates out then I think they are setting themselves up for negative press. I see this going one of two ways. It will either be a quick 20 minutes straight to the point show and people will go "that's it?" or it will be an hour+ slog where the developer interviews drag on for too long.

The current climate is so skewed to the extremes that this show can only have 2 outcomes, amazing or awful. There is no middle ground. I expect a lot of hate after this show. No matter how much people are warned to keep expectations low, they wont. If you don't plan on blowing people's mind with major new reveals, I will always suggest social media posts instead. How much showmanship can you put into games we have already seen multiple times that just need that date on the calendar?

Yes finally great stuff

I don't think it will be as late as the 25th as we have had little to no mention of Games Pass games for January & Age of Empire 2 xbox pre orders aren't live yet either & it releases on the 31st. I'm expecting it at the end of this week or early next week.

@Bmartin001 I'm glad they are finally doing something but yes exactly. Starfield is tentatively coming out by end of Q1? And Bethesda just said they will be no more delays.... So before end of Q1 but no more delays yet only once it has been shown with gameplay. They are holding this game's best stuff way too close to their chest. Sucks to think it might be a mess/bomb.

@Rmg0731 If this were just a spoken report, I'd be hesitant to buy it too. But the fact that he's wrote an article on Windows Central and published it shows he is confident in this being true. Otherwise you're throwing away any credibility that you have as a journalist.

I guess we'll see over the next few weeks though...

@Moonglow it's a Q1 game though......

Sony does this all the time. They’ll have a show where it has a bunch of stuff but save the next big game for a separate showcase of its own. That’s what they seem to be doing with Starfield and I’m totally good with that.

People wanted a showcase but still have to find something to complain about. That’s the Pure Xbox community for you.

If everything is still on schedule, as we believe it is from 'current' reports, it was inevitable that MS would likely have a 'Direct' in January.

We are 'expecting' Starfield, Forza, Redfall and Minecraft before E3 2023 - the 'first' scheduled event of the Year. Therefore it was clear that MS would need to do a Direct show to let us know the next 5 months Road Map for Xbox inc 3rd Party partner games too, what and when we can expect these games before they do their E3 presentation to show us the 'next' year+ ahead...

@kuu_nousee Given the release window if Bethesda is right and there's no delays, I think it makes the most sense to make Starfield the E3 blowout showcase with show-floor hands on experiences since real E3 is back. I think that's what they're probably aiming form, maybe with "available today on Game Pass" tagged all over it.

The only question then is when the patch releases that makes it playable without clipping through the floor brush and corrupting all your saves. It is Bethesda we're talking about....

@Dezzy70 Seriously....BotW is a game that really wants to be played on the big screen, but from May through October I like to spend as much time outside playing handheld mode as I can, where I largely ignore PS & XB and mostly focus on Switch games, and I predict BotW2 will be my May to July obsession entirely handheld....

@Somebody Do you remember the E3 presentation with the guy from Arkane that went on for an hour in monotone voice about Dishonored 2 that became a meme?

We have an hour of dead airspace for Arkane to fill ahead of us. Please be excited.

Yeah, I think the show will flare up console wars again. I expect a dry presentation about a few games that have been known forever, and will be very dry, and aren't necessarily "big hitters". I can see a lot of trash talk from the PS fanboy crowd for a month after this, and a lot of "meh" from the XB crowd. Starfield is the crown jewel and that's likely absent for now.... Honestly, with this speculated lineup, I think the success of the show hinges on Turn 10's ability to turn heads, maybe show up the already excellent GT7, and get people talking, even if racing sim is somewhat niche.

@cragis0001 to be fair MHR and Persona hits Jan 20th which would buy them breathing room till February and they could open AoE pre-orders before this show.

@mousieone you'd still expect Microsoft to hype those releases & any new titles being added to GP this month this week. & If Microsoft wasn't gonna show off AoE again until days before launch you'd of expected them to have allowed pre orders when it was first announced last year. Aaron Greenberg has also tweeted it should be a fun week. Which again makes me think it's sooner than the 25th.

@NEStalgia forza is part of why I would rather have this be social media posts. Their deep dive could be appealing to car heads but really boring for everyone else. If this show has 30 minutes of how track temperatures affect car performance or how they recorded the car noises, I will mentally check out. There is also the potential for a boring (IMO) Minecraft interview that drags on. I personally don't care much for that universe or what inspired a spinoff (besides money).

Basically what I'm saying is that from the sounds of it this will be a long deep dive into 3 wildly different games. In the social media post alternative I could skip right to the Redfall interview that i am interested in. I'm leaning towards waiting for a recap of the show and will probably have to choose which negative article/video I want to get my recap from.

@Somebody "will probably have to choose which negative article/video I want to get my recap from."

LOL, </gaming>

@NEStalgia
I shall be playing on a 65” LG C2 which also helps Switch wise if you are careful with the TV settings and a bit of smoothing and resolution enhancement.
Also the av surround sound set up will be ok as well, the Switch not the best at that but you get some rear spacial awareness.
So far this year unless something comes along my game of 2023.

@NEStalgia With Microsoft and Sony's announcement silence over the Activision acquisition, I could see E3 being cancelled. Ubisoft likely don't have enough for a showcase so will share between Summer Game Fest and Nintendo Direct, Square Enix would have much more but do something similar, Bethesda is owned by Microsoft and EA will probably be in shambles given how the FIFA license is gone. I don't see E3 going ahead if only Nintendo want to participate.

@NEStalgia
Switch Best-Selling Console in the UK in December, PS5 in 2nd, and Xbox Series X|S in 3rd - Sales. Official UK GFK numbers.
Not bad for a 6 year old console and not the cheapest console either, due to the series s price reductions over December.

Give me that Goldeneye release date. I'm fine if Starfield skips it but i hope we get a release date at least.

Would be cool if something new was revealed like say that rumored MCC style Gears Collection.

Starfield being left out is a bummer as that's the main game I want to see gameplay and more info for.

If the "direct" is just Minecraft Legends, Forza Motorsport and Redfall then I won't be watching it live and instead just watch the Redfall stuff later on YouTube, as I'm not interested in those other two games.

@NEStalgia and MS are acting like they're the underdog with no games despite having 20+ studios and are spending 60+ billion on Activision. Sony are only doing what MS would do if the roles were reversed as both are as bad as each other and both are sinking to embarrassing lows right now over it.

@Grumblevolcano forgive me but where are you getting MS wouldn’t participate in E3? And also, MS being radio silent had nothing to do with AB and everything with a lack of anything to show. That’s was evident before the AB deal had issues.

Lest I imagined E3 2022 being lack luster.

@mousieone The radio silence started the day the FTC made their move. Since then was no Game Awards announcements, no 2nd half of December Game Pass batch and currently no 1st half of January Game Pass batch with Stranded Deep and Mortal Shell being one-off additions.

There's 6 Xbox Game Studios games releasing in the 1st half of 2023 so there's more than enough for something XGS to have been shown at the Game Awards but nothing came.

So if the FTC making their move is why the radio silence since then has been happening then Microsoft may not want to participate in E3 2023 for the same reason.

@Dezzy70 Haha, yeah, I never play games on the big screen, always on a monitor. Eyesight is too poor for a far away screen My gaming monitor is an LG IPS display. It's not OLED but honestly it's very very pretty, I'm more than happy with it as long as I have 60fps (30fps......is not great...) I have the SWOLED though, so there's perks to playing handheld

@WallyWest The thing is, MS actually IS the underdog in the gaming market with much less market penetration than either Sony OR Nintendo in terms of each company's presence in the gaming market. They're legitimately the small fry here in the gaming marketplace (not the parent company size, but nobody's comparing the market cap for MS Enterprise Solutions vs Sony/BMG Music Group in these reviews.) Yes, they have more assets and more liabilities with their large top heavy studios, but by revenue and market, they're much smaller than the competitors currently.

Sony on the other hand is the undeniable leader, and by no small margin in gaming revenue (if we ignore Tencent and Apple which both dwarf even Sony.) It's disputable between them and Nintendo who leads in market size since they excel in different areas, but in revenue they're tops by far. They're definitely the more disingenuous one here, posturing to make their smaller corporate holding portfolio mask their undisputed dominance in the market in question to buy favor.

Sony's fear/claim here to regulators is that MS with this transaction could in the future then become dominant and prevent competition. Maybe they're right. But predicting the future ability of a company to become too successful, and preemptively prevent that by kneecaping underdogs based on the value of their assets and success in other markets so they don't upset the balance of the existing market leadership is pretty much the opposite of what competition protection is meant to do. That's not competition protection it's market protection from competition.

@Grumblevolcano E3 won't be cancelled. Too much money involved, too many schedules with too many companies, etc. Not with Reedpop under contract to do it. Sony doesn't participate anymore anyway so silence is the norm from them, and MS can and will put together a show with their known existing first party lineup that's already on the docket the regulators are looking at anyway, especially with Starfield. They just won't drop any new titles they otherwise may have and will do a "Nintendo-like" E3.

But more importantly, the drop-dead date on the deal closing is July, so E3 will be 3-7 weeks from the drop-dead anyway. At that point any wheeling and dealing is done and the cards are laid out, so neither really has anything to hold back on anymore. I'm guessing EU/UK will be done and dusted by then, the concessions will be signed, and the FTC will already have been flagrantly ignored to let the case go through the courts where it'll easily be resolved.

@NEStalgia
Upgraded at the weekend to SWOLED white
great display. £299.
Mainly play docked with Switch Pro Controller
Got the Splatoon 3 special edition, as well.
The only true way to play, especially a big epic game.

@NEStalgia @Grumblevolcano that’s your interpretation. Hardly poof.

But if they were planning this showcase at the same time then the same set of events would happen. Shows like this are literally planned months in advance. Months not weeks. And unless they had a showcase planned the release date of something like Forza or Minecraft legends wouldn’t have matter to the FTC. In fact, those not being dated leans more into a showcase than regulators. Actually you’d think MS would want to show off Minecraft legends just to prove to regulators that they play nice. So yeah no it had nothing to do with the FTC.

All we want are the firm dates for Forza, Starfield and Redfall... they could do that in a tweet.

Welp? Color me intrigued. It'll be the first showcase I watch as an Xbox owner.

It was all great until Starfield is not rumored to be in the show, it’s definitely getting delayed…

People in this comment section complaining over a rumour

@mousieone I generally have to agree with grumble on this one though, you really see a sharp change in their communication right when the ftc thing happened. I don't think Minecraft is part of that, but I do think they expected thet already would have been making gp drops from the abk cache.

@Dezzy70 Nice! Yeah SWOLED feels so much nicer in every way. I mostly play my switch handheld these days, if I happen to be at the couch that's an opportunity to use psxb instead.. Though I'm a massive Splatoon addict and play that both handheld and with pro controller (especially for high rank play.)

I really hope the rumours of 1 Vs 100 coming back are true, that was such an amazing concept, i loved it.

@NEStalgia yeah no I don’t agree sharply. You both are making conjecture when there’s would be no reason. A) Forza has been a MS IP since the beginning. If they went radio silent for the FTC why not date that? The FTC wouldn’t care. Forza’s never been a concern. And again choosing to ignore Minecraft Legends makes no sense because its biggest audience is Switch Owners which would largely ignore an Xbox focus showcase. And not dating the game when they were literally using that as counter argument to the FTC on what they would do with COD? That makes no sense. We going to go radio silent because we don’t want to draw attention on our exclusive titles but we aren’t going to over hype our multi platform titles ?? it’s either one or the other you can’t have both.

Besides why be radio silent for the Game Awards which I doubt the FTC knows about but be loud and proud for your own show which will drawn their attention?

Hope this comes to be. Redfall recent news has me pretty excited

Only thing new I'm expecting is the announcement of the second Forza Horizon 5 add-on.

Which hopefully, hopefully will be better than the incredibly dull Hot Wheels DLC.

@mousieone If this event does end up existing it does lean more towards the Game Awards absence being because of this showcase rather than the FTC. The event wouldn't explain the absence of a 2nd half of December and 1st half of January Game Pass batch though.

The event rumour looks fake, having a Xbox event but not featuring Starfield at all seems like a big red flag. Anyone who has paid attention to Directs and State of Play knows that if a Xbox event happened and Starfield was completely absent then the post-event discussion would be dominated by its absence.

@Grumblevolcano actually the rumor says there will be a separate event just for Starfield. At least the full post from Jez says that. But given Jez Corden, Jeff Grubb, and Tom Warren have all heard of the event I’m least likely to believe it’s fake. Also Jeff is saying Hi-Fi Rush is supposed to be there. Why name drop that? It could be fake it’s just up until all three of them were reporting on the same thing… I’d agree but now

12pm Pacific….5pm Eastern…8pm GMT?

You mean 3pm Eastern?

@mousieone Doesn't matter if FTC knows about "TGA" or not, it hits the press if there's announcements, and feeds ammo to either FTC or to those raising complaints (namely Sony) to bring attention. MS's schtick works best if they look under-performing and unimportant in the market. If they start flexing muscles and presenting a strong PR image, a strong GP, or even sharp growth in GP subscriptions because the service is great, it weakens their position. It doesn't weaken their actual legal arguments, and it probably doesn't sway FTC itself, but it's probably more about CMA/EU, while the FTC's position made them waver more so any show of strength just makes things complicated.

Not so different for Sony, having no show, no presentation, not even vaunted GaaS products they're so proud of to keep investors from freaking out, their shtick, revolves around looking tiny and vulnerable to big bad imperial Microsoft's path of destruction. Flexing muscles and showing market dominance won't do them any favors. Both serve their own legal interests by being pretty quiet.

Of course, MS is going to host something on the games they already announced, but that's just it, games they already announced and were already cited in documents as exclusive, so they have to make that content and ONLY that content's marketing stand out. And not make GP look too appealing, ironically to prevent any sharp increase in numbers to prevent it looking like it's "foreclosing the new subscription gaming market" (which is only a "market" for those with an agenda.)

Other than Nintendo that just does Nintendo things I've never seen any console mfr just go as silent as these two went this year. Normally they're all obnoxiously boastful. When Larry and Aaron shut up for months at a time, you know it's abnormal.

@Grumblevolcano Starfield makes sense to me, and Sony's done the same with omitting a major tentpole from a general SoP to have its own information presented later. Starfield's a summer game, which lets them give a huge spotlight on it at E3 at actual release time when more eyes are on the marketing, and they probably have too little to talk about otherwise at E3 unless we want more Fable CGI trailers, or they can borrow some Bungie staff from Sony to tell us why Halo's not totally dead yet. Sony skips E3, and Nintendo will be riding their BotW2 high and talking about who knows what (new hardware? MP4? Mario and Diddy Kong's Baking Contest mobile AR game? Chris Pratt unveiled as live action Samus?) MS has the E3 spotlight to themselves ,and Starfield is what they've got for that timeframe, so it will get it's day in the sun in June. It doesn't seem super weird for them to omit it now since in June you're going to hear "Starfield" said more times than "World Premiere" and "Just one dollar" combined.

@mousieone It's more about setting expectations. If Starfield is having its own event and the game's still on track for releasing by June, it would make sense to announce the Starfield event before or during the more general event.

I sometimes forget I even have an Xbox as all I do on mine is play MW2. Are they still making games for this thing? </sarcasm>

@NEStalgia Hi-Fi Rush is supposed to be announced in this direct as the surprise new previously unannounced Tango game. =p

Now that could be a no show … but I hope not.

@Grumblevolcano well it’s been confirmed so it’s not a rumor anymore. It’s also been confirmed Starfield isn’t a part of it. Guess it blows your theory out the window.