On November 12 the XBOX FanFest was held in Seattle to celebrate Xbox’s 25th anniversary. Although it wasn’t given much fanfare, that doesn’t mean important things didn’t happen. There was celebration and there were, of course, many announcements from the company. Perhaps the most interesting were the announcements of two new games from two major franchises: Doom and Wolfenstein. Both by their longtime developers.
Returning to their classic series
Asha Sharma confirmed on her X account, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that Slaughter mode would be coming to Doom The Dark Ages | Relevation on November 16 and that they’re already working on their next video game. Although they haven’t stated that it’s a new Doom, Jill Braff, head of Bethesda, said that “we’re leaving behind a planning model focused mainly on deciding what each studio’s next project will be separately in order to back our biggest franchises“. So it seems likely that it will be either Quake or Doom. Though they could run into problems doing so after having to cut nearly half their staff.
Likewise, Machine Games confirmed that Wolfenstein 3 is in development. Thanks to another tweet from Asha Sharma, we know that the game is in development and that we’ll know more about it in the future. Although the previous game in the franchise, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, was very well received, they shelved the franchise to focus on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, released in 2024.
While they haven’t given any details or release dates for either of these games, it’s interesting to see Microsoft is returning to its biggest franchises. A move promised by Sharma and Braff, as we’ve already pointed out, but one that seems to be taking shape now.
