Xbox Gets Back To Basics With Their Summer Games Showcase

It’s been a rough few months for Xbox. Even though they’re supposed to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the game console, the company also lost its traditional faces of the company — Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond — earlier in the year. This was the first showcase for new Xbox executive vice president and CEO Asha Sharma and a chance to demonstrate to the faithful her vision going forward. Obviously, it’s still incredibly early days for her and much of the presentation comes down to the final decisions Spencer and Bond made, but it still feels like the games featured — and the ones absent from the video — is itself a statement.

Xbox’s highlight for this Fall is Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel that covers humanity’s first encounter with the Locust Hordes: the often-mentioned Emergence Day. Since it’s the focus point, Xbox not only opened the show with a six minute trailer, but continued after the show with a nearly thirty minute “direct” covering everything from the changes in combat and destructibility, to co-op functionality. But the biggest change: the game is no longer coming to PlayStation 5. Although a version for the platform is said to exist, Sharma herself confirmed this would be an exclusive in an attempt to restart console wars.

Weeks before the Xbox Games Showcase, the company confirmed Fable would be slipping past its 2026 release date into February 2027. Still, they had more to show here, as they premiered the game’s villain, Isabel of Wraithmarch (Hayley Atwell). In a game series all about crafting what sort of hero the player wants to be, this Fable seems to have a focus on introducing the player to other “heroes” in its world, and revealing how they turned out. It looks great and, fortunately, it finally has a release date: arriving February 23rd Xbox Series, the Microsoft Store, Steam, and PlayStation 5.

It’s honestly impressive how Team Ninja basically figured out a way to release a new game every year. After unleashing the highly acclaimed NiOh 3 this year, they’re planning to follow it up with a sequel to 2023’s Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. Set after the original game, players will once again become a nameless hero fighting against humans and demons alike. There’s no release date yet, but considering the developer loves debuting titles in the first three months of the year, fans likely won’t have too wait long. The real question: amidst all these sequels, where’s Stranger of Paradise 2?

inXile’s Clockwork Revolution looks incredible every time they show it, but it also inspires the same question every time: when is this coming out? The showcase provided have a 2027 answer. There’s still no firm release date, of course, but it feels right to be Xbox’s next big Fall game. Place a special emphasis on “Xbox”, though, as Clockwork Revolution is another console exclusive. PlayStation 5 owners shouldn’t be looking forward to it. Honestly, this is playing with fire, as this game doesn’t seem like it’d be big enough to be locked to a single platform.

Xbox continues their close partnership with Atlus, allowing them to appear with two separate Persona trailers. The first: a proper game trailer for Persona 4 Revival, their remake of the original JRPG. Supposedly, the game is meant to offer not just improved gameplay, but modern quality of life improvements to help make it a bit more bearable for younger players. With this, pretty much every Persona game from 2006 onward has modern levels of visual fidelity. Fans old and new can jump into this game on February 18th. But that wasn’t the only thing Atlus had to present…

The beloved developer also confirmed Persona 6 is in development with a new teaser trailer. There’s not much information, but we do know players can expect to enjoy modern-day Japan and that it will serve as a strong entry point. With both announcements, it really feels like JRPG fans will continue the incredible run they’ve been on since Persona 5 originally launched in the States a decade ago. See also the recent updates to the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series.

Vivarium is one of the most surprising games to appear at the Xbox showcase. Coming from Studio Meadowflower, Crunchyroll, and Shochiku Games, it follows an eleven year old girl named Jenny who lives in a location known as the terrarium. It is a perfect little pocket world full of quirky characters to distract the main character, but there’s also clearly something else bubbling under the surface. Looking like something right out of a 1980s anime, this is exactly the kind of indie game guaranteed to have all eyes on it when it releases next year.

The biggest surprise of the show had to be Toys for Bob actually convincing Activision to let them make another Spyro game. Spyro: A Realm Beyond is the first true original game in the series since 2006! And with the developer already remaking the original trilogy, there’s not a better team for the job. They’re already making the right decisions to start — like bringing back Spyro’s original voice actor, Tom Kenny. Honestly, the PS1-era platforming mascots deserve more love, so hopefully this will start a trend of classic platforming characters making a comeback.

In all, the only criticism for this showcase: it was probably the safest thing Xbox could’ve come up with. After years of experimenting to become more than the “Halo/Gears/Forza” memes, the 2026 summer presentation really proved the most important games to the platform are, indeed, Halo, Gears of War, and Forza Horizon. There was a huge focus here on all the classic shootbangs of the 360 era, from Gears and Halo to Call of Duty and even State of Decay. Still, it might be exactly what they need to survive in the future.

That said, it’s also not hard to notice that much of the focus centered on games most dialed-in players already knew about. Much like Sony’s summer State of Play, it gives off the vibe of a company ready to move on from this generation. A company whose new games aren’t going to be shown not because they’re not ready, but because they’re cross-gen, and their promo videos are going to look suspiciously next-generation when we see them. With all the computer part shortages I might be wrong, but Xbox hasn’t shied away from saying Project Helix is soon. Perhaps next year we’ll be finding out a real timetable for what “soon” is.