Earlier in the month, Phil Spencer talked about his excitement at the “announced and unannounced” projects happening at Bethesda Studio Group after Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda’s parent company, Zenimax. Lets look at a few of these unannounced projects and try to intuit what they may be with the help of Xbox insider Klobrille:
The first studio group, Arkane, are a lot like Playground Games (another Microsoft-owned game studio), with two independent teams working on different intellectual properties (“IP”). The first team in Lyon, France is working on Deathloop and finishing their contracted release with Sony for the PlayStation 5. The studio in Austin, Texas is still staffing for a new game with ’emergent gameplay’ and role-playing game (“RPG”) systems in a first-person shooter a la Dishonored and Prey. It is possible that we could see an announcement for Prey 2 or Dishonored 3 anytime soon.
Machinegames, developers of the new Wolfenstein reboot seem to be finishing off the ‘New Order’ trilogy with the third and final game. Besides that, a second-team inside the studio is developing a multiplayer component, likely an arena multiplayer shooter similar to Halo or Call of Duty which would provide value to fans and a long tail for the IP.
Zenimax Online, makers of the successful Elder Scrolls Online, seem to be spinning up a new team to make a next-generation IP, focusing on a new game world with an RPG slant. This was confirmed by the lead developer, Alex Tardif, and that the game will be made in a whole new engine rather than Bethesda’s Creation Engine or Microsoft’s favoured Unreal Engine.
This shows a massive continuation in Microsoft’s investment in video games and shows the dedication Microsoft has in the RPG and shooter genres. We will hear more about these in the coming years as Microsoft’s release slate becomes clearer next year at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Seems like the Dev replied to a tweet by @_XboxNews a day before klobrille released a similar one, credit where credit should be due.