Today, Microsoft announced an upcoming livestream called “Developer_Direct,” which will showcase several upcoming games from the company’s now numerous development studios.
Set for Jan. 25 at 3 p.m. ET, the company promises to get a glimpse redfallthe latest game from dishonored and Prey developer Arkane – whose pedigree actually goes all the way back to influential PC classics like System shock and Ultimate underworld. It also includes glimpses of games from other studios, including Minecraft Legends, Forza Motorsportand The Elder Scrolls online.
Notably absent from that list is the game most people probably want to see: Star fieldthe science fiction epic of The older scrolls and Fallout developer Bethesda Game Studios. If that’s your interest, don’t worry though – Microsoft has announced that too Star field would get a standalone event for a “deep dive” in the near future.
Star field is expected to launch sometime in the first half of this year, but we haven’t seen much of it since last summer apart from a few short and mostly detailed videos on the game’s YouTube channel.
The first Star field gameplay presentation
As for the games that will be shown on January 25, Microsoft says there will be “few minutes of gameplay” from them redfalla vampire-themed first-person shooter that takes elements of the Distant cry series and co-op shooter Left 4 dead, among other things. “Fans can expect to learn more about combat, customization, bosses, the open world, and more,” says Microsoft’s blog post.
“Gameplay” is promised for Minecraft Legends and Forza Motorsport. Finally, The Elder Scrolls onlineThe game’s annual update cycle continues with new details on “2023’s main chapter update” and “the latest regions of Tamriel to become playable”.
For years, the gaming industry has been dominated by a handful of press conferences around the summer E3 event. But companies like Nintendo have more recently refocused on studio recordings of year-round online video streams, allowing games to be shown at a cadence that better suits those games’ development cycles. In the past, studios often wasted countless hours of work preparing E3 demos for June, whether the timing was right or not, leading to lost development time, long hours, and sometimes unrepresentative demos.
However, Microsoft has typically maintained an E3-esque cadence, even as rivals Nintendo and Sony have moved to the sporadic livestreaming model sometimes referred to as the “direct” strategy. This event appears to be one of Microsoft’s most important moves in the new direction.
The timing makes sense; Microsoft has been on a studio and publisher hunt for the past few years and now has an unparalleled number of legendary studios and intellectual properties under its wing, including Bethesda, Arkane, Obsidian, Rare and many others, including all of the Activision Blizzard studios, should the proposed mega-acquisition go through. Get on.
These acquisitions follow many years in which Microsoft lagged behind rivals in in-house exclusive content for its gaming platforms.
There’s also one last bit of relevant added context: Microsoft has gone all in on a Netflix-esque subscription model with Game Pass, bundling an ever-changing library of first- and third-party titles (some exclusive, some not) in subscription packs for Xbox consoles and Windows PCs.
It’s likely that most, if not all, of the games shown during the upcoming Developer_Direct stream will be included in Game Pass.
