I’m starting to feel like Charlie Brown from The Peanuts comics, and Microsoft is Lucy, constantly snatching the ball from me when I go to kick it. Every year I write this article and every year I say it looks like the Year™ Where Everything Comes Together for Xbox. Last yearin fact, I said, “Looking ahead to 2024, it appears that this positive momentum will continue and, with any luck, it will snowball.” Microsoft probably didn’t live up to that demand in the first 10.5 months of the year, when, after many years of waiting, only the visually complete but gameplay-free Hellblade 2 was released in May. But to its credit, the big-spending publisher finished the year exceptionally robust, releasing three exclusive hits in a row: STALKER 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024and my personal vote for Game of the Year 2024 and the game I think it is the best Xbox exclusive in years, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
So can Microsoft maintain its positive momentum from tardy 2024 into 2025? Call me Charlie Brown if you must, but yes, I truly believe that 2025 could be Xbox’s strongest and richest year since at least 2021, when Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite, and Psychonauts 2 were released. Let’s take a look at why I’m so bullish…
A fountain of fantasy and firearms
2025 is off to a pretty quick and, from what we know, quite impressive start on Xbox with Obsidian’s first-person RPG Avowed scheduled for release on February 18. The action of this “Skyrim Lite” takes place in the studio’s acclaimed and beloved Pillars of The Eternity universe should last about the same meaty, but not gigantic, 25-40 hours as the latest Obsidian first-person RPG The Outer Worlds, which does a great job every time. We are more and more impressed playedincluding quite recently.
Back to Fable: In my opinion, a Fable reboot has more potential – both critically and commercially – than almost anything else in the Xbox portfolio outside of Call of Duty, The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. We’ve seen Playground take on the British charm, action-adventure RPG a few times now, and each time it’s been clear to us that Playground not only “gets” Fable (that’s British in its own right, which no doubt helps), but the game also looks absolutely amazing. Who knew that the ForzaTech engine could create a stunningly lovely fantasy forest as well as a racetrack?
There’s another huge reason to be positive about Fable, and that’s Playground’s track record. Simply put, this studio has not only never disappointed, it has never achieved anything less than a 9 out of 10 consensus. Its last game, the aforementioned Forza Horizon 5, was an IGN game Game of the year 2021. And apparently he has plenty of time to cook, as Fable was officially announced in 2020, and the work has already been done before. Microsoft knows that Fable can’t be fooled a second time, so I couldn’t be more excited about what’s been shown so far.
Then, while it’s certainly not as eminent as Fable, we can’t forget about South of Midnight, a third-person action-adventure game from We Happy Few developer Compulsion Games that leans heavily on folklore of the coves of the Deep South. This game is nothing like the developer’s previous games, although it is more risky, but also more intriguing. Microsoft has this decided for 2025, so consider South of Midnight to be something of a wild card for next year.
Another smaller-name Xbox exclusive that I think everyone will be talking about if it finally arrives in 2025 is “Replaced.” It’s a pixel-art, cyberpunk side-scrolling action-adventure game that oozes style and, as I discovered when played in the summer, it is much deeper than I expected. “Replaced” has the potential to join a long list of legendary indie games available exclusively on Xbox, including the likes of Limbo, Braid and Inside.
Finally, don’t forget about Xbox’s biggest franchise (since it now owns it), Call of Duty. The game will, of course, remain on PlayStation, but Xbox fans will get it on the first day as part of Game Pass. Call of Duty 2025 is here It is said to be a sequel to Black Ops 2, set in the futureso perhaps Treyarch is handling the campaign in this case after Raven Software did stellar work in this year’s Black Ops 6 campaign. And the other, much quieter behemoth in the Xbox portfolio, Minecraft, will probably get Some kind of substantial content in the game, with what Minecraft movie on the way.
What about the equipment?
Except for a 180 from Xbox boss Phil Spencer previous commentsMicrosoft won’t be pushing a mid-generation upgrade to the Xbox Series X (Xbox Series XX, if you will) in 2025, if at all. And although Xbox portable console is in developmentwe probably won’t play or even see it in the coming year.
So should we expect up-to-date hardware in 2025? Probably not – at least in terms of power. Xbox Series S does storage update in 2024, as in the case X series. And we’ll no doubt see a whole bunch of up-to-date special edition controllers, and maybe even that an improved controller codenamed Sebile mentioned in FTC leaks from over a year ago, but 2025 doesn’t seem to be the year Xbox will release any up-to-date silicon.
Anything else?
Rare’s Everwild appears to be in limbo and/or development hell, something we haven’t seen or heard from in years. Could it reappear in 2025? Maybe, but I’m not holding my breath. Meanwhile, Halo is being rebooted at the studio level, which in my opinion means that the next Halo game will likely be either a complete reboot of the series or a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved. Either way, that’s how it will be built in Unreal Engine 5and it will probably take some time. It was a steampunk RPG game Clockwork Revolution by InXile announced in 2023 with an “in due course” release window. Outer Worlds 2 has already been released revealedand now we know it’s coming in 2025, which means Obsidian is planning a launch two first-person RPG games from the same year.
And speaking of first-person RPGs, yes rumors about the remaster of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion did it actually happen? How about Contraband from Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios, which appeared on the Xbox Showcase in 2021 and hasn’t been seen or heard from since? All we know is that it’s a “cooperative smuggler’s paradise set in the fictional world of 1970s Bayan.” If it does reappear in 2025, it’s unlikely it will reappear next year too, given the usual PR/marketing cycles for big-budget games.
The wild card for 2025 is Double Fine, an endlessly artistic and versatile studio led by game design legend Tim Schafer that hails from Nominated for game of the year in the Game Awards 2021 competition Psychonauts 2. I expect Schafer and the studio to announce their up-to-date project soon, but no one knows if it will actually come out in the next 12 months.
Finally, anything from this year’s Xbox Showcase that didn’t have a release year at the end of the trailer can safely be assumed to be a 2026 (or later) release. This means I don’t expect to play Gears of War: E-Day, Perfect Dark or State of Decay 3 next year. And that’s okay! Finally, it seems that Xbox is starting to release not only a steady stream of first-party games, but consistently Good their stream. This is exactly where Xbox has been heading since it started acquiring studios in 2018 to try and solve its first-party game problem, and damn it, I think this is the year they finally do it. Please don’t take this ball away from me, Lucy-Microsoft.
