Today, Microsoft announcement an upcoming livestream called “Developer_Direct” which will include looks at several upcoming games from the company’s now numerous development studios.
Scheduled for January 25 at 3 p.m. ET, the company promises a preview of red fallthe last game of Dishonored and Prey developer Arkane – whose pedigree actually dates back to influential PC classics like System shock and Ultimate underworld. It will also include previews of games from other studios, including Minecraft Legends, Forza Motorsportand The Elder Scrolls Online.
Notably absent from this list is the game most people probably want to see: star fieldthe sci-fi epic Ancient Scrolls and To fall developer Bethesda Game Studios. If you’re interested, don’t worry, Microsoft also announced that star field would get a standalone event for a “deep dive” in the near future.
star field Should launch in the first half of this year, but we haven’t seen much of it since last summer, other than a few short, mostly detailed videos on the game’s YouTube channel.
The first one star field presentation of the game.
As for games released on January 25, Microsoft says there will be “several minutes of gameplay” starting at red fallwhich is a vampire-themed first-person shooter that seems to combine elements of the Far cry serial and cooperative shooter left for dead, among others. “Fans can expect to learn more about combat, customization, bosses, open world, and more,” Microsoft’s blog post reads.
“Gameplay” is promised for Minecraft Legends and Forza Motorsport. At last, The Elder Scrolls OnlineThe annual update cycle will continue with new details on “the major chapter update of 2023” and “the last regions of Tamriel to become playable”.
For years, the gaming industry has been dominated by a handful of press conferences surrounding the E3 event in the summer. But companies like Nintendo have recently shifted their focus to year-round studio-shot online video streams, allowing games to be released at a cadence that better matches those games’ development cycles. In the past, studios often used many hours of work to prepare E3 demos for June, whether the timing made sense or not, resulting in wasted development time, long hours, and sometimes demos. not representative.
However, Microsoft generally sticks to an E3-like cadence, even though rivals Nintendo and Sony have moved to the sporadic live-streaming model which has been dubbed the “direct” strategy. This event appears to be one of Microsoft’s most significant moves in the new direction.
The timing makes sense; Microsoft has been on a studio and a publisher shopping spree over the past few years, and it now has an unparalleled amount of studios and IPs under its wing, including Bethesda, Arkane, Obsidian, Rare, and many more, including all Activision Blizzard Studiosif the the mega-acquisition project succeeds.
These acquisitions follow many years of Microsoft lagging behind rivals in terms of in-house exclusive content for its gaming platforms.
There’s also one final piece of relevant additional context: Microsoft has opted for a Netflix-like subscription model with Game Pass, bundling an ever-growing library of first-party and third-party titles (some exclusive, some not) into bundles. subscription for Xbox consoles and Windows PCs.
It’s likely that most, if not all, of the games featured on the upcoming Developer_Direct stream will be included in Game Pass.
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