Developer_Direct 2024 Teases a Promising Year for Xbox
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Microsoft starts the year with the 2024 Developer_Direct presentation, showcasing four upcoming titles coming from the Xbox umbrella — Avowed, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Ara: History Untold, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. All of these Xbox titles are single-player games and are planned for release sometime this year.
It feels like a taste of what’s to come from Xbox after making major plays of acquiring big-player publishers such as Bethesda and Activision Blizzard. The effects of Activision now setting shop on their side has yet to be seen, but we are seeing their previous acquisitions ready to take the lead as their promising titles are on track to come out this year.
Avowed – Launching Fall 2024 (Day one in PC and Xbox Game Pass)
Avowed, the open world RPG from the wizards at Obsidian Entertainment has given us a good look of their latest game and has announced a window release of Fall 2024. It’s a solid first deep-dive on a game they have been working on for years and it’s shaping up nicely to be a perfect title that found themselves lost in titles such as The Elder Scrolls series.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – Launching May 21, 2024 (Day one in PC and Xbox Game Pass)
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II will be an experience and we finally get to take it all in this May. We are now just months away from release and they are still focusing on explaining the experience and storytelling of the game as Senua isn’t a typical hero, just an individual fighting her demons that can be relatable to people experiencing a similar struggle.
Visions of Mana – Launching Summer 2024 (Xbox Series X|S, PC)
Xbox went off-script and delivered a pleasant surprise as Square Enix announced that Visions of Mana the latest title in the long-running Mana series, is finally debuting on Xbox platforms when the RPG launches this Summer.
Ara: History Untold – Launching Fall 2024 (Day one in PC Game Pass)
The strategy game fan in me got excited when Ara: History Untold was given the spotlight. A nice twist in the 4X genre as this strategy game has a lot of randomness and freedom for players to adapt on the fly or build towards the game’s win condition. With the turn system now resolving all player actions at once, players are forced to take risks and foresee possible outcomes, which sounds great. It’s great to see new 4X games coming out and take a stab at dethroning strategy classics like Civilization.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – Launching 2024
When it was announced that the studio MachineGames, the studio behind the recent Wolfenstein games, was working on a new Indiana Jones adventure, I was left optimistic considering their track record and their take on one of the legendary archeologist’s adventures looks rather fun so far. The mix of first-person and third-person is the perfect middle ground to work with an iconic character but also play with their strengths as the studio is well-known for single-player shooters. Hopefully, we see more of the game as with Todd Howard being the executive producer and Troy Baker lending his voice to bring his version of Indiana Jones to life, I left Developer_Direct rather optimistic.
All the games showcased in the Developer_Direct are all set for a 2024 release, teasing a rather promising year for Xbox for both PC and console.
To watch Developer_Direct 2024 in full, take a look below.
Stellar Blade’s potential was clear, but as its ambitions expanded into something greater, it lost focus. As soon as Stellar Blade tries to bring everything together, it merges into a single figure that looks deformed and uneven. The quality is unquestionable but it wasn’t the final product I was slowly building in my head as I went through the game’s first half.