Aaron Greenberg has revealed that Microsoft’s June 11 event is now a double feature.
This would be the long promised Starfield Direct, and the Xbox Games Showcase. On Twitter, he shared this message:
“Save The Date: June 11th we have a DOUBLE FEATURE planned with our Xbox Games Showcase + Starfield Direct. Excited to see the work our studios and partner teams are doing to bring this to life! Fan Art By: @klobrille
🙅🏼♂️💚U”
Microsoft had earlier announced that they would continue with their June Xbox Games Showcase event this year, even as they had decided to not participate in E3 2023. The Xbox Games Showcase is, in fact, the annual event they have scheduled at E3, where they put a spotlight on the biggest upcoming games they have for the holidays and after. Therefore, this announcement was an indication that they would still be doing their biggest promotion during E3 week regardless.
When Microsoft then released their first major Starfield preview since the title’s announcement, they also revealed that the Starfield Direct would also be scheduled on E3 week. And in both times, Microsoft had shared the same date, June 11, 2023.
So there’s no real surprise in Aaron Greenberg’s announcement. We knew that Microsoft’s entire plans were to show off Starfield and their other titles on June 11.
The big announcement seems to be that they have opted to make it a “double feature’. That implies that they will be holding these events one after the other. Given the high interest, Microsoft may choose to go for the Starfield Direct first. But we don’t quite know what exactly Xbox Games Marketing has planned for the day.
But don’t take that as an indication that this whole event is a mystery. Of course, Microsoft have held multiple Xbox Games Showcase events before so we do have a general idea of how it will go. There will be a few trailers, Microsoft may announce some titles for the first time, and there is the potential for hours of interviews and / or demos of games.
Of course, the elephant in the room is that E3 itself has been officially cancelled. While many gamers and insiders believe the event had long gone past its sell date, this reveal actually puts the game companies in an awkward position.
E3’s organizers would have had the role of keeping each publisher and game company’s press event spread apart. While not everyone had to follow E3’s rules, and of course some company’s just ran their events simultaneously to E3, this generally meant gamers could follow all the games being promoted well enough.
This first non-E3 E3 could, honestly, be complete chaos. If multiple publishers hold events at the same time, gamers and the gaming press will be hard pressed to catch up.
Microsoft’s choice to keep their events tied together is probably prudent with this in mind, but we won’t quite know how E3 week is going to play out.
