Doom: The Dark Ages and new mystery game headline first Xbox Direct of 2025

Xbox Developer Direct 2025 key art featuring windows highlighting Doom The Dark Ages South of Midnight and Clair Obscur games — What are you most excited to see? (Microsoft)

Microsoft will be sharing new details for three of its 2025 games as well as reveal an entirely new project from an unspecified studio.

We were only talking about upcoming games showcases earlier today and, lo and behold, Microsoft has just confirmed that they will be hosting one this month.

It’s not too surprising, considering Microsoft has held one of its Xbox Developer Directs every January since 2023. Last year’s was a particularly strong showing thanks to its reveal of Bethesda’s Indiana Jones game.

With any luck, this upcoming one will be just as good, especially since one of the four games to be highlighted will be brand new. Although so little is currently known about Doom: The Dark Ages that it may as well be too.

When is the 2025 Xbox Developer Direct showcase?

According to Microsoft, its next Xbox Developer Direct is scheduled for Thursday, January 23 and will air at 6pm GMT. For what it’s worth, that’s precisely the date leaker eXtas1s claimed yesterday.

The showcase will be streamed via Microsoft’s official social channels, so you can watch it either on YouTube or Twitch. Microsoft hasn’t specified how long it will last but, based on the last two, you can probably expect it to run between 40 and 50 minutes.

What Xbox games will be shown at the 2025 Xbox Developer Direct?

Microsoft has promised four games will be highlighted by their respective developers. The first is Doom: The Dark Ages from id Software, which was annouced during Microsoft’s summer showcase last year.

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This is definitely the biggest draw of the lot, since it has been nearly five years since Doom Eternal and its reveal trailer only gave fans a glimpse of its medieval-esque action.

Second is South Of Midnight by Compulsion Games. This is the studio’s first release since 2020’s We Happy Few and will hopefully be a stronger showing than that game wound up being.

It’s certainly one of the more unique first-party offerings from Microsoft thanks to its stop motion style cut scenes, Deep South setting, and gothic fantasy inspirations.

Third is Clair Obscura: Expedition 33, the debut title from Sandfall Interactive. Despite coming from a French studio, this turn-based role-player takes obvious inspiration from Japanese titles, with its reactive combat bringing to mind Nintendo’s Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi games.

All three games are slated to launch this year, although it’s worth highlighting how only South Of Midnight is exclusive to Xbox Series X/S and PC. The other two are coming to PlayStation 5 as well.

Microsoft has strongly implied other Xbox exclusives could make the jump to PlayStation further down the line, but it’s unclear if they’ll discuss any of that this month.

Xbox release schedule for 2025

Microsoft has a few other games it has scheduled for 2025 that, for whatever reason, are being omitted from the Developer Direct. The first is fantasy role-player Avowed from Obsidian Entertainment, which you think would make an appearance since it’s coming out on February 18 and is so far the only Xbox game to have an exact launch date.

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There’s also Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds 2, which was confirmed for 2025 during last year’s The Game Awards. Then there’s the Fable reboot, which we still haven’t really seen much of. A proper gameplay demonstration is sorely needed, along with confirmation that it’s out this year.

Last is the full release of free-to-play side scroller Towerborne, which launched as an early access title last September.

The only other game to be teased for the showcase is a mystery new title, with Microsoft only saying that viewers will ‘visit a surprise location to see another studio’s brand new game.’

All this really tells us is that this won’t be an already announced game, like the Perfect Dark reboot or, heaven forbid, Rare’s Everwild. There’s also no telling if the plan is to have it out in 2025 or whether this will be related to a major IP or something entirely new.

The ‘surprise location’ remark is strange and doesn’t really suggest any existing rumours about upcoming games, such as MachineGames’ Quake reboot. It’s not even clear if it’s an in-game location or where the developer is based.

The last time Microsoft teased a new reveal at a Developer Direct, it turned out to be Hi-Fi Rush, which shadow dropped that very same day and went on to become a critical darling for Microsoft and developer Tango Gameworks… though that wasn’t enough to protect Tango from closure.