Skip to main content

Microsoft will hold a second Xbox showcase next week

Summer Gaming Marathon Feature Image
This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

Microsoft announced that it will be hosting the Xbox Games Showcase Extended on June 14 at 10 a.m. PT to show off new trailers and in-depth looks at games revealed at the company’s Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase.

The event will be a follow-up to the upcoming Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase, which is one of this summer’s biggest gaming reveal streams at present. The main show, which is set to be held on June 12 at 10 a.m. PT, is expected to be a major showcase for Microsoft’s first and third-party games coming to Xbox.

Recommended Videos

This follow-up event, planned to last about 90 minutes, will “have new trailers, take deeper looks at the news from the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase, and speak with some of your favorite game creators.”

Please enable Javascript to view this content

This is not the first time Microsoft has hosted a second event following its main conference. It hosted a very similar show last year, which mainly focused on internet influencers speaking to developers about their games in a more casual setting. If it follows the same formula, that should make up the bulk of this 90-minute runtime.

Microsoft already set some viewers’ expectations ahead of their showcase with the announced delay of two of its highest-profile games: Starfield and Redfall. While that doesn’t exclude either of these games from being shown off, many are concerned about what Xbox has in terms of major releases for the remainder of 2022, especially for those who subscribed to Game Pass and who suddenly don’t have any first-party games to look forward to on the service.

We’ll be covering the event as part of our ongoing Summer Gaming Marathon, so stay tuned!

Jesse Lennox
Jesse Lennox has been a writer at Digital Trends for over four years and has no plans of stopping. He covers all things…
Avowed is a bigger and bolder RPG than I expected
A Xaurips from Avowed.

While it's not as big as an RPG like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Avowed is still a massive evolution for the Pillars of Eternity franchise. That series gave us slow-paced, isometric CRPGs, while Avowed is a more action-packed first-person RPG set in the same universe. Having gone hands-on with its Gamescom build at an Xbox event in Los Angeles, I was relieved to see that Avowed still retains the core DNA of developer Obsidian Entertainment.

The Avowed quest I played sported beautiful visuals, had excellent writing, and felt faithful to the wider Pillars of Eternity franchise. Clearly, a lot of effort went into reinterpreting what a Pillars of Eternity game could be like when played from a different perspective and set in a never-before-explored area of Eora called The Living Lands. In an interview, art director Matthew Hansen explained how the team approached that opportunity.

Read more
The next Callisto Protocol game is actually a roguelike spinoff
A character fighting a giant red and yellow tentacle monster. They're ready to unleash an attack with a cone of effect in front of them.

[REDACTED] - Announce Trailer

Striking Distance Studios announced its follow-up to the action horror game The Callisto Protocol at Gamescom 2024, and it's a roguelike dungeon crawler set in the same universe.

Read more
Ara: History Untold will make the wait for Civilization 7 less painful
Key art for Ara: History Untold.

Sid Meier's Civilization VII impressed with its gameplay debut at Gamescom Opening Night Live, but it's not out until next February. Thankfully, Oxide Studios and Xbox Game Studios Publishing have an excellent alternative on the way next month, one that's been seven years in the making. That would be Ara: History Untold, which I went hands-on with for over an hour at a Gamescom-adjacent Xbox event in Los Angeles.

It's certainly overwhelming at first -- as most 4X games are -- but the more I played Ara: History Untold, the more I fell in love with its intricacies. With some clever design decisions, Oxide takes a fairly familiar strategy subgenre and applies tweaks to make watching a civilization grow feel even more personal and satisfying. While I'll probably need to spend a couple of hours reading through the game's glossary and tutorials before I can master it, I'm looking forward to doing so.

Read more