South of Midnight may be releasing as soon as next year.
We had previously reported that the Australian Ratings Board had already posted their ratings for this game, Clockwork Revolution, and Senua Saga: Hellblade II. That heavily suggests that these games comprise three of the four AAA releases for 2024. This new rumor definitely puts more fuel in the fire.
As shared by Timur222 on Twitter, Brad Hilderbrand, a senior public relations manager at Microsoft, included South of Midnight as one of the games he is working on for 2024 on his LinkedIn profile.
Now, you may be wondering why game companies seem very tolerant when their employees post these things in LinkedIn. In general, LinkedIn is an important place for those same companies to scout for their future employees, and on both sides of this, they would want to know what those potential future employees were working on. That includes games that haven’t released yet, and also cancelled games.
Of course, we have seen that employees were forced to remove such listings on their LinkedIn accounts as well, so it’s a case for case thing.
It would definitely make sense for games like South of Midnight and Clockwork Revolution to already be upcoming games. Microsoft has told us they have enough games in the pipeline to release four AAA games every year for the next few years. They most likely would have already revealed all four of their AAA releases in 2024 at this point.
While the emerging norm is for games to get the most of their advertising two months before they get released, game companies would obviously need to announce these games a bit earlier than release. This is so that gamers know that these titles were even coming. In the interim, word of mouth will generate interest and hype for them.
And obviously, the best venue that Microsoft had to make those announcements was this year’s Xbox Games Showcase, which was held in the E3-less E3 Weekend. This was definitely a huge event for Microsoft, as they bought out several theatres to hold live showings of the event, for free.
So if this adds to the evidence that South of Midnight is already coming next year, then it also adds to the evidence that Clockwork Revolution is coming next year as well. It also means its highly likely that the fourth 2024 title has also already been announced, if not at Xbox Games Showcase 2023, then possibly earlier.
It’s certainly going to be exciting to see if these games do get released in the next twelve months.
