What to expect from Xbox in 2025

I’m starting to feel like Charlie Brown from The Peanuts comics, and it’s Lucy who keeps popping up when Microsoft throws the football. Every year I write this feature, and every year I say this looks like The Year™ where everything comes together for Xbox. last yearIn fact, I specifically said, “Looking forward to 2024, this positive momentum looks set to continue and hopefully snowball.” Arguably, Microsoft didn’t deliver on the first 10.5 months of the year, with the visually packed, but playable Hellblade 2 coming out in May after years of waiting. But to the big-spending publisher’s credit, it finished the year very strongly, dropping three exclusives in a row: STALKER 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024and my personal vote for Game of the Year 2024 and the game in my opinion the best Xbox exclusive in years, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

So can Microsoft maintain that positive momentum from late 2024 into 2025? Call me Charlie Brown if you must, but yeah, I really think 2025 could be Xbox’s strongest and most prosperous year since at least 2021, which released Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite, and Psychonauts 2. Let’s explore why I am. optimistic…

Fantasy and Firearms Source

Xbox’s 2025 is getting off to a rather early and, from what we can tell, very impressive with Obsidian’s first-person fantasy RPG Avowed , which launches on February 18th. This “Skyrim Lite” is set in the studio’s well-established and beloved Pillars of. Universe of Eternity is supposed to be a meaty-but-not-awesome 25-40 hours long. Obsidian’s latest first-person RPG The Outer Worlds, and it’s getting us more and more excited every time. he playedincluding recently.

Then, while it still doesn’t have a firm release date, id Software’s unexpected zag for its prequel, Doom: The Dark Ages, is almost a lock for 2025. In fact, I would make an In-N-Out Burger lunch. that it drops in the first half of the year for two reasons: 1) Doom Eternal shipped in March 2020, which is just a few months away. a full half decade since the last Doom (which followed four years after 2016). In other words, it’s time! Mainly because the idTech engine is already solid despite jumping to a new console generation. And 2) I would bet another In-N-Out Lunch, Playground Games’ long-awaited Fable reboot — which, remember, was tagged with a 2025 release window in the Xbox Showcase 2024 trailer — is set to be a big fall/holiday hit on Xbox. end of year game That means Doom will likely ship before the holidays. But whenever it does, and remember it’s confirmed to be a cross-platform release on day one, it’s likely to kick some serious ass on Xbox next year, given how good id Software’s last two Doom games have been.

Back to Fable: In my opinion, the revival of Fable has more potential, both critically and commercially, than Call of Duty, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout’s almost-Xbox portfolio. We’ve seen Playground’s action-adventure-RPG tinged with British charm a few times, and each time it’s been clear that Playground doesn’t just “get” Fable (it’s British itself, which certainly helps), but the game completely It also seems incredible. Who knew the ForzaTech engine could make a stunning fantasy forest as well as a racetrack?

There’s another big reason to be optimistic about Fable, and that’s Playground’s track record. Simply put, this studio has never disappointed, never getting less than a consensus 9 out of 10. Its last game, the aforementioned Forza Horizon 5, was IGN’s. Game of the Year 2021. And it’s clear that he’s being given plenty of time to prepare, as Fable was formally announced in 2020 because the work was already done. Microsoft knows it can’t try Fable a second time, and I couldn’t be more impressed with what it’s shown so far.

Next, while it’s certainly not as big a name as Fable, we can’t forget South of Midnight, the third-person action adventure from We Happy Few developers Compulsion Games, which packs a punch. Folklore of the deep south bayous. This is nothing like the developer’s past games, more dangerous but also more intriguing. Microsoft has signed up for 2025, so consider South of Midnight a wildcard for next year.

It’s replaced by another lesser-named Xbox exclusive that I think will have everyone talking when it ships in 2025. It’s a pixel-art, cyberpunk-style side-scrolling adventure game that oozes style and, as I discovered. play in the summer, it’s much deeper than I expected. Replaced has the potential to join the long list of legendary Xbox-exclusive indies that includes games like Limbo, Braid, and Inside.

Finally, don’t forget Xbox’s true biggest franchise (which it now owns), Call of Duty. It will remain on PlayStation, of course, but Xbox fans will get it on Game Pass on day one. It’s the Call of Duty of 2025 It is rumored to be a sequel to the upcoming Black Ops 2so maybe Treyarch is handling the campaign for this one after Raven Software did a star job in this year’s Black Ops 6 campaign. And the other much quieter juggernaut in the Xbox portfolio, Minecraft, will probably get it some kind of great game content, with what Minecraft movie on the way.

What about the Hardware?

Minus a 180 from Xbox boss Phil Spencer previous commentsMicrosoft won’t be pushing a mid-generation upgrade to the Xbox Series X (an Xbox Series XX, if you will) until 2025, if ever. And yet A handheld Xbox is in developmentnext year we will hardly play or even see it.

So should we expect any new hardware in 2025? Probably not, at least in terms of horsepower. The Xbox Series S got one storage upgrade In 2024, he did just that Series X. And we’ll definitely see a bunch of new special edition controllers and maybe even that An updated controller called Sebile Alluded to in FTC leaks from over a year ago, but 2025 doesn’t seem like the year Xbox will release any new silicon.

Just?

Rare’s Everwild seems to be in limbo and/or development hell as we haven’t seen or heard from it in years. Could it resurface in 2025? Maybe, but I’m not holding my breath. Meanwhile, Halo is being reset at the studio level, which means, in my opinion, that the next Halo game is likely to be either a complete reboot of the franchise or a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved. Either way, it will be Built on Unreal Engine 5and it will probably take a while. InXile’s steampunk RPG was Clockwork Revolution announced With a 2023 release window that will “come in due course”. It was The Outer Worlds 2 revealedand now we know it’s coming in 2025, so that means Obsidian plans to ship it two first-person RPGs in the same year.

And speaking of first-person RPGs, that will be it Rumored Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remaster really happen? What about Contraband, from Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios, which was at the 2021 Xbox Showcase and hasn’t been seen or heard from since? What we do know is that it’s “1970’s Bayan, a co-op smuggler’s paradise set in the fictional world of the 70s.” If it were to re-emerge in 2025, it’s unlikely to even ship next year, given the usual PR/marketing cycles in big-budget games.

The wild card for 2025 is Double Fine, the endlessly creative and versatile studio led by game design legend Tim Schafer. Game Awards 2021 Game of the Year nominee Psychonauts 2. I would expect Schafer and the studio to announce the new project soon, but whether it will actually come out in the next 12 months is anyone’s guess.

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