Jun 13, 2023 - Technology
From Starfield to Spider-Man, 2023's game calendar is filling up
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Starfield. Screenshot: Bethesda Softworks/Microsoft
A series of video game showcases over the last two weeks has filled out much of the release calendar for late 2023 and roughly sketched out 2024, with some notable exceptions.
Driving the news: Last Wednesday’s live Summer Game Fest stage show in Los Angeles and a well-received, prerecorded cascade of trailers by Microsoft on Sunday filled in a lot of blanks.
The late 2023 calendar now looks like this:
August
- 18th: Madden NFL 24 (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) — EA's annual football juggernaut.
- 25th: Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) — a new mech combat game from the studio behind Elden Ring.
- 31st: Baldur's Gate 3 (PC, PS5) — a long-awaited new role-playing game from genre experts Larian Studios, and an even longer-awaited new Baldur's Gate.
September:
- 6th: Starfield (Xbox, PC) — Microsoft’s marquee release of the fall, a massive role-playing game from Bethesda about exploring the galaxy.
- 19th: Mortal Kombat 1 (PC, PS5 Xbox Series, Switch) — a reboot of the popular fighting game franchise.
- 26th: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (PC, PS5, Xbox Series) — an expansion of CD Projekt’s futuristic adventure that will ship alongside an overhaul of the base game to improve many of its core systems.
October:
- 10th: Forza Motorsport (PC, Xbox Series) — Microsoft’s hyper-detailed racing sim.
- 12th: Assassin’s Creed Mirage (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Luna) — a lower-priced, back-to-basics assassin’s adventure set in 9th century Baghdad.
- 17th: Alan Wake II (PC, PS5, Xbox Series) — a long-awaited thriller from Remedy Entertainment.
- 20th: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (PS5) — Sony’s marquee release of the fall, featuring Peter Parker and Miles Morales.
- 24th: Cities Skylines II (PC, PS5, Xbox Series) — the return of the field’s top city-building game.
November:
- 9th: Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name — the latest from Sega's urban adventures formerly released under the Yakuza franchise banner
December:
- 7th: Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (PC, PS5, Xbox Series) — Ubisoft's open-world take on the James Cameron movie franchise
What’s missing:
- EA, Take-Two and Activision have yet to announce dates for their FIFA successor EA Sports FC, the next NBA 2K and the next Call of Duty, respectively, though all are expected by year’s end and all will likely be among the top-performing games of the year.
- Nintendo, which always has a busy slate close to the holidays, hasn’t publicly slotted in any games past July, aside from a Pokémon expansion.
- Sega is promising Sonic Superstars for late 2023, and Genshin Impact hit-maker MiHoYo says its new game Honkai: Star Rail will come to PS5 later this year, but neither has a date.
For 2024:
- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (PC, Xbox) is on tap for, yes, 2024.
- The lead creators of the beloved Persona games are making a new Atlus role-playing game called Metaphor: ReFantazio (PC, Xbox Series).
- Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws (PC, PS5, Xbox Series) is an open-world, underworld adventure set after "The Empire Strikes Back."
- Sega’s next game in its long-running Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, Like a Dragon Ishin: Infinite Wealth (PC, PlayStation, Xbox), is slated for early 2024.
- Frostpunk 2 (PC), the latest strategy game steeped in moral dilemmas about how to lead a struggling city, is also slated for some time next year.
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