Xbox bets big on 2024, hopes to avoid last year’s mistake

By James On Jun 11, 2023

Coming out of Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase you’d get the undeniable impression that Xbox is betting big on 2024 with Granted, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and more. It sounded a lot like Xbox’s grand strategy for 2022: pinning everything to 2023. So, how did that go?

Following the 2022 Xbox Games Showcase, Microsoft claimed on Twitter that 50 games would be coming to Xbox and PC “over the next 12 months”. The list was a grab bag – a mix of new first-party and third-party games, Game Pass benefits, Xbox ports of titles already published (such as Valheim), and updates for live service games in progress (such as Halo infinity).

Many of the games Xbox mentioned did come out during that 12-month window. Some third party tent poles – included Diablo 4plus the Empty space And Resident Evil 4 remakes – were instant commercial and critical successes. Some got varying but generally mediocre levels of stamina: Gotham knights, Somerville, Wo Long: fallen dynasty, High in life, atomic heart. Rate for the first party? Uh, we don’t need to talk about first-party fare (hello, redfall).

Of the total list of 50 games, 12 are yet to be released, and only three currently have a set release date:

Light Year Limit
Party Beasts (now scheduled for Sept. 20)
Star field (now scheduled for Sept. 6)
Forza Motorsport (now scheduled for Oct. 10)
Flint
Arch 2
Ara: Untold History
Eiyuden Chronicle: One Hundred Heroes
STORER 2
To replace
Ereban: Shadow Legacy
Cocoon

To replace And STORER 2 are being developed by studios in Ukraine, which has been embroiled in a war against Russian aggressors since February 2022. Cocoon is set to appear during the Annapurna Interactive Showcasescheduled for June 29. Arch 2 stars Vin Diesel (and more importantly, has been postponed to 2024). The rest are tied to “coming soon” or a vague “2023.”

After today’s showcase, Microsoft took a different tack than last year. Instead of stating a hard timeline for the upcoming slate, instead tweeted that the Xbox Showcase lineup for 2023 was “matchday one”.