Microsoft Teases Next Xbox Developer Direct in January

Microsoft has started teasing its next Xbox Developer Direct in January, which will feature some of the games Microsoft is planning to release in 2026. In an interview with Variety ahead of The Game Awards 2025 ceremony, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty said that Microsoft will have a lot to share next year as Xbox will celebrate its 25th anniversary.

“I can’t share exactly what’s there, but we’ve got a lot of stuff that we’re shipping next year. In fact, usually Dev Direct is about highlighting what’s coming up for the year ahead. This year, we’ve got more stuff coming up than we can fit in one show,” Booty said. “So I will tell you that Playground Games is going to be in the Dev Direct, but we’ll have more stuff next year to ship than we can fit into one Dev Direct show in January, which is a good place to be.”

Playground Games is currently working on Forza Horizon 6, which will be set in Japan, as well as the Fable reboot that Microsoft had to delay to 2026. The latter will have the difficult task of reviving a franchise that has been dormant since the release of Fable Anniversary back in 2014. Microsoft previously tasked The Initiative, a new studio, with a reboot of the Perfect Dark series, but the project was ultimately cancelled over the summer.

Microsoft still has more big games in the pipeline for 2026, including Halo: Campaign Evolved and Gears of War: E-Day. South of Midnight, the winner of the Game for Impact award at the Game Awards yesterday, will also be launching on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 next spring, Booty said.

“For us, it’s really going to be a great year. It’s going to be the 25th anniversary of Xbox,” Booty said. “We’re coming up on franchises of ours that have got these decade-level anniversaries. It’s the 40th anniversary of Bethesda, Blizzard’s 35, ‘Diablo’ shipped 30 years ago. We’ve announced things like the ‘Halo Campaign Evolved’ collection that we’ve got coming, and we’ve got a lot of other things that we’ll talk about soon, that ship next year. So it’s going to be a real banner year for the brand and a banner year for some of our biggest franchises to show up across the industry.”

If you missed it yesterday, Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred was also announced during The Game Awards ceremony with an April 28, 2026, release date. The new paid DLC will bring two new classes, including the fan-favorite Paladin, which is available today for people who pre-purchase the extension. Blizzard plans to reveal the second new class soon and share more details about the game’s new region, skills, and itemization mechanics.