The Xbox and Bethesda showcase removed the usual hype, but added some uncertainty
During E3 2015, Bethesda announced Fallout 4 with a release date of five months later. Fallout 4 had been in full production for two years at the time, with a smaller team working on it over the course of the previous four, while the rest of the studio was fully involved in Skyrim. Fallout 4 managed to make it to its release date and came out on November 10 of that year.
Fast-forward to E3 2018, and Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls 6 with a 30-second video of some mountains and no date at all. We haven’t seen more yet, and we have no idea when we will. The two approaches to marketing couldn’t be more different.
With nothing to chew on during the long wait, Elder Scrolls fans have fallen into plenty of conspiracy holes, analyzing and over-analyzing everything from official tweets to Starfield trailers for clues about The Elder Scrolls 6.
This year’s combined Xbox and Bethesda Showcase didn’t bother us with hyped videos for distant releases. “Today we’re doing something we’ve never done before,” said Sarah Bond, director of the Xbox Creator Experience. “For the first time, our program is focused on the games you can play for the next 12 months.”
Every game that came out, from Redfall and Starfield to Diablo 4 and Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, has a release window of 2022 or the first half of 2023. Not exactly the focus of Fallout 4, as many of them don’t they came with exact dates (and during the Covid era we’re used to a certain degree of slippage), but it’s still a completely different kind of marketing push.
It’s a game changer for both Microsoft and Bethesda. During the Xbox Games Showcase in 2020, Microsoft announced the return of Fable with a vague one minute advance (opens in a new tab), and revealed Avowed and State of Decay 3 with trailers that weren’t much more detailed. That same year, Microsoft released a cinematic trailer for Perfect Dark during The Game Awards. None of them were close to being finished, and none of them have come out yet.
The Xbox & Bethesda Game Showcase 2022 edition was, by contrast, packed with fan-pleasing gameplay footage. The words “PLAY DAY ONE WITH GAME PASS” came up so many times that I experienced semantic satiety and am no longer sure what the phrase means. It appears to have been well received, with comments on YouTube such as “The format of exhibits should always be like this” and “Great presentation – love the actual game footage and variety of gameplay.”
However, there is an unintended consequence to this format, as it basically confirms that a bunch of games we’ve been hoping to see won’t be coming out in the next 12 months. Those games revealed in 2020: Fable 4, Avowed, State of Decay 3 and Perfect Dark? Don’t expect them until the end of 2023 at the earliest. The same goes for Hellblade 2, which was announced in 2019. And The Outer Worlds 2, the Indiana Jones game, the 1970s cooperative smuggling game from Avalanche Studios, Contraband, Ninja Theory’s Project Mara, and Project Belfry, which is being created by Banner Saga. developers Stoic Studios.
Do you remember Everwild? Rare’s game about exploring a “magical, untamed world” that Microsoft said was “coming soon” two years ago? Another absence, its development is now rumored to have been completely restarted and according to CVG (opens in a new tab), their goal is “optimistic” for 2024. If the showcase had looked beyond 12 months, perhaps we’d have some confirmation that development on these games is still moving forward. Without him, the rumor mill is left to do its thing.
A portion of the Xbox and Bethesda showcase bucked the trend. Reliably, Hideo Kojima seemed to announce that the friendship ended with PlayStation, now Xbox is my best friend. What will be the product of this collaboration between Kojima Productions and Microsoft? We’ll probably have to wait until next year to find out.
Read more: All games at non-E3 2022
Reference-www.pcgamer.com
