According to multiple sources, including Windows Central’s Jez Corden, Microsoft will host a showcase early next year. A handful of other credible leakers have corroborated the same report, with Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb adding that the showcase will feature the reveal of a “Pentiment-level game from a first-party studio” before naming the said studio as Tango Gameworks, the developers of The Evil Within series. This isn’t ground-breaking news. Pentiment is a small-budget game developed by Obsidian Entertainment, which came out on November 15. The said studio is currently working on at least two AAA projects, Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, both of which do not have release dates. Moving on, a “Pentiment-level game” doesn’t fit with Tango Gameworks’ usually MO either. Before their Microsoft acquisition, Tango Gameworks, a studio founded by Resident Evil’s creator, Shinji Mikami, established itself as a premiere developer of survival horror titles like The Evil Within series. Its latest game, Ghostwire: Tokyo, is a timed-exclusive for the PS5 and will be headed to other platforms sometime next year. If the reveal of the said game is the highlight of the upcoming Xbox showcase, then Xbox is going to want to go back to the drawing board. Earlier this year, Microsoft made the bold claim that all the games it showed at the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase in June would come out and join the Game Pass in the next 12 months. Some have made their way to the store shelves and the Game Pass already. But, the bigger ones, like Starfield, Redfall, Forza Motorsport, and Hideo Kojima’s “secret” Xbox project are still nowhere near in sight. It’s not unusual for companies to reveal release dates of its games a month before. However, Xbox might want to eschew the norm if only to ease the concerns of Xbox owners who felt neglected in the face of PlayStation’s overwhelming lead when it comes to exclusives. At this point, an Xbox and Bethesda games showcase early next year won’t be enough; it has to be as large if not longer than what Nintendo and Sony are presumed to be planning.
