Xbox Games 2023: What To Expect From Multiple Consoles?

Xbox Games 2023: Beginning slowly due to a combination of pandemic slowdowns and highly anticipated titles like Elden Ring, the video game industry ended the year with a tidal wave of major releases that look likely to continue next year.

Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Valve, Nintendo, and the recently acquired Bungie by Sony are just some gaming titans whose futures are mapped out below as we look ahead to 2023.

Microsoft

If Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is to go through in 2023, the biggest question is whether or not the FTC will be able to block it. If the deal goes through, Microsoft will overtake Sony as the largest video game publisher in the world, falling only behind the incredibly diverse Tencent.

Eventually, Halo, Minecraft, Doom, Fallout, Age of Empires, Sea of Thieves, Gears of War, Psychonauts, and Call of Duty would all be developed under the same roof at Xbox Game Studios, creating a bewildering number of tentpole gaming franchises.

Only a select few other video game publishers can boast a roster even remotely as strong, and even those have usually spent the better part of the last three decades or so building that roster from the ground up.

Filings show that Microsoft has designs on establishing a foothold for Xbox in the lucrative mobile game industry through Activision Blizzard’s subsidiary King, the creators of phone-game franchises like Candy Crush and Bubble Witch.

If the FTC successfully blocks the acquisition, it will be a setback for Microsoft’s expansion plans and eliminate the possibility of Xbox performing a much-needed teardown and rebuild of Activision Blizzard. Until this acquisition is finalized, it will be challenging to report on other developments in the gaming console market.

However, the Xbox Series X|S was conspicuously absent from this year’s Game Awards ceremony, suggesting that Microsoft didn’t have much to announce that wasn’t already common knowledge. However, three major first-party games are scheduled for release early in 2023 for the system, and they will all retail at a new, higher price point.

During the first half of the year, Arkane Studios, creators of the critically acclaimed game Dishonored, will release their upcoming Xbox One and Windows PC exclusive, Redfall, a cooperative action game in which players hunt vampires together. In Q3 2023, Turn 10 Studios in Redmond, Washington, will release the new eighth installment in the Forza Motorsport series.

Nintendo

Two of Nintendo’s most significant events for 2023 aren’t even related to video games, which is strange. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, starring Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy), will be released on April 7, and on February 17, Super Nintendo World will open at Universal Studios Hollywood.

In contrast, the next Legend of Zelda game is on the horizon. The sequel to 2018’s smash hit Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom will launch exclusively for the Nintendo Switch on May 12. The entirety of Nintendo’s fiscal year has historically revolved around its massive first-party releases, and this one is no exception.

As of this writing, no other major Nintendo first-party releases are planned beyond the upcoming Fire Emblem title, Engage, which will be released on January 20. The series’ classic strategy and tactical gameplay have returned in the first mainline Fire Emblem game since 2019’s Three Houses.

However, Nintendo does have some fan favorability to reclaim in 2023. Critics and players alike have panned the latest Pokemon game, Scarlet and Violet, for the Switch for its abysmal performance at launch, citing problems like crashes, lag, and low frame rates.

The fact that this happened with a flagship Nintendo product, which are usually tested to death before release, is a worrying sign for any company. This month, Nintendo was also in the news because of the unexpected cancellation of the Smash World Tour, a third-party esports tournament based on Nintendo’s Smash Bros. games.

In November 2021, Nintendo declared that, for the first time, it would collaborate with Panda Global, a Detroit-based company, to support the Smash esports scene officially. Similar licensing talks took place with Smash World Tour before they unexpectedly collapsed on November 30 and canceled the Tour’s upcoming plans.

As a result of these events, Panda Global had to fire its CEO and drop support for many of its sponsored players at the start of December. Both Nintendo and Panda deny the allegations that Panda manipulated Nintendo to cancel a competing tournament over licensing issues. Meanwhile, it appears that Nintendo is again keeping its esports scenes at a distance, as it did before 2021.

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