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Top-selling video games lead Xbox’s annual refresh
By Tim Biggs
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is among 30 games detailed at the annual Xbox Showcase, which also included new versions of Doom, Gears of War and Perfect Dark.
Part of the popular sub-franchise of shadowy spy warfare, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will arrive on October 25, featuring a campaign set in the 1990s at the end of the Cold War. There is an online multiplayer component with an all-new player movement system, and a round-based Zombies mode where players team up to fight hordes of the undead.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is set just after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Call of Duty is one of the best-selling game series in history, and this is the first time in 10 years an entry has been featured in an Xbox showcase, as Microsoft completed its $100 billion aquisition of publisher Activision late last year, and now controls the franchise.
However, rather than lock Black Ops 6 into its own platforms, Microsoft revealed it would publish the game on current and last-generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles, as well as on PC through its own store, Valve’s Steam and Activision’s Battle.net.
In the past, Sony has struck deals with Activision to ensure PlayStation players had access to a new Call of Duty first, or access to better gear than Xbox players. Microsoft gaming chief executive Phil Spencer has slammed those kinds of deals, saying players on any platform will have equal access to Black Ops 6.
However, while players on all platforms will have an option to buy the game for $110, only players on Xbox and Windows will be able to access it as part of Microsoft’s $11-per-month Game Pass subscription, which includes every new game from Microsoft-owned studios.
“Going forward, everyone will experience the game, including the Black Ops 6 beta, the season expansions and the updates [at the same time],” Spencer said during the showcase.
“There are over 100 million people who play Call of Duty every month. We hope to grow that community by making Black Ops 6 the first Call of Duty game that will be available in Game Pass day one.”
That same philosophy also applies to another major shooter game revealed at the showcase. Doom: The Dark Ages is developed by the Microsoft-owned id Software and will launch into Game Pass on Xbox and PC next year, but will also be published on Sony’s PlayStation 5.
Spencer has previously said that where an acquired franchise has a long history on other platforms, Microsoft does not want to appear to be withholding it from fans, which certainly tracks for Doom, which began on MS-DOS in 1992 but has appeared on almost every platform since then.
The Melbourne-made Mixtape was also featured at the showcase. It’s a musical adventure featuring tracks from DEVO, The Smashing Pumpkins, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, and more.
Less clear is Microsoft’s approach to ongoing games when it comes to Game Pass. Diablo IV, The Elder Scrolls Online and Starfield are included with the subscription, but their respective major expansions featured in the showcase need to be purchased separately.
Meanwhile, Fallout 76 and Sea of Thieves have new expansions coming, too, but they will be included at no extra cost. A new chapter for World of Warcraft was also shown, but no changes to its structure were announced; it will apparently remain PC-only under its own subscription, and no part of it will be included in Game Pass.
The showcase covered four additional games from Microsoft’s own studios coming to Game Pass when they launch later this year on Xbox and PC: fantasy role-playing game Avowed, Age of Empires spinoff Age of Mythology: Retold, the latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator and cinematic blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
Showcase also featured five early looks at the company’s slate for 2025 and beyond. An emotive trailer was shown for Undead Labs’ anticipated zombie survival sim sequel State of Decay 3, first gameplay was shown for Compulsion’s magical realism bayou adventure South of Midnight, and there was another very British look at the reboot of Fable, this time featuring comedy actor Matt King as a retired hero (a previous video featured Richard Ayoade as a giant).
Xbox highlighted 30 games at its annual show.
The biggest reveals were a gameplay sequence from the long-gestating, near-future espionage game Perfect Dark, set in Cairo, and a surprise announcement of a new Gears of War game set 14 years before the 2006 original.
Xbox has come under fire for lacking the kind of exclusive games line-up found on Sony’s platforms, despite many acquisitions, and in recent years some much-hyped games (including Halo Infinite and Redfall) have launched to a mixed critical reception. The impressive showing of home-grown games in the showcase is clearly aimed to counter those complaints.
However, there are still signs of strain. For example, some Microsoft’s internal teams have evidently enlisted outside help to get their games across the line, with Crystal Dynamics (Shadow of the Tomb Raider) supporting on Perfect Dark and Eidos-Montreal (Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy) brought in to work on Fable. And the showings for State of Decay 3, Perfect Dark and Gears of War: E-Day came without a projected release date or year.
Elsewhere in the showcase, Xbox highlighted games that will be available in Game Pass at the time they launch, including sci-fi horror STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, which was delayed due to the invasion of its developers’ home country of Ukraine but is now set to release in September.
There was also 90s coming-of-age musical adventure Mixtape from the Melbourne-based team behind 2022’s Artful Escape, and five others. Anticipated games not made by Microsoft and not set to be included in Game Pass also made showings, including Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater.
Between selling games from all publishers on its store, releasing select games on PlayStation, offering its own games for sale or by subscription and making Game Pass deals with third parties and independent developers, it is clear that Microsoft is continuing to diversify its gaming business away from the old paradigm of selling consoles as closed ecoystems.
However, it is not leaving its consoles behind just yet, with the reveal of a new digital-only Xbox Series X (i.e. without a disc drive). It has no price attached yet but will presumably cost less than the disc-drive version’s $800.
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