{"id":348973,"date":"2026-01-02T23:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T23:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/348973\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T23:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T23:34:10","slug":"xbox-developer-direct-has-always-had-a-surprise-but-what-about-january-2026s-showcase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/348973\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox Developer Direct Has Always Had A Surprise, But What About January 2026’s Showcase?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft will give us most of the lineup for Xbox Developer Direct 2026 very soon (probably next week), but it’s worth noting that there’s been a surprise every year so far. The first Developer Direct in 2023 gave us the shadow drop of Hi-Fi RUSH<\/a>, Developer Direct 2024 saw Square Enix making a surprise appearance with Visions of Mana<\/a>, and Developer Direct 2025 unveiled Ninja Gaiden 4<\/a> and Ninja Gaiden 2 Black<\/a> \u2014 the latter being a shadow drop.<\/p>\n

Here’s the lineup of games for each edition so far, along with those surprises:<\/p>\n

Dev Direct 2023<\/a>: Minecraft Legends, Forza Motorsport, Hi-Fi Rush (surprise!), Elder Scrolls Online, Redfall
\nDev Direct 2024<\/a>: Avowed, Hellblade 2, Visions of Mana (surprise!), Ara: History Untold, Indiana Jones
\nDev Direct 2025<\/a>: Ninja Gaiden 4 (surprise!), Ninja Gaiden 2 Black (surprise!), South of Midnight, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, DOOM: The Dark Ages<\/p>\n

So, it stands to reason that we’re almost certainly going to get another surprise at January 2026’s Xbox Developer Direct showcase, and the odds are pretty high that a shadow drop could be involved.<\/p>\n

What that might be? Eh, we have no idea. There’s obviously the Fallout 3 Remaster<\/a> that’s been talked about for multiple years now, but who knows if that’s ready to go yet. Perhaps Halo Studios has a little extra something for us to celebrate the 25th anniversary… what if Halo 5<\/a> got added to the Master Chief Collection? That’d be cool, right?<\/p>\n

We’re just spitballing here, but we’d love to hear your thoughts about what might show up at the Xbox Developer Direct 2026 showcase. Will it be another low-key surprise like Visions of Mana, or something huge like Hi-Fi RUSH?!<\/p>\n

Tell us what you think down in the comments below.<\/p>\n

\"Fraser<\/p>\n

Fraser is the News Editor at Pure Xbox, where he spends his time reporting on the biggest stories in the world of Xbox and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft will give us most of the lineup for Xbox Developer Direct 2026 very soon (probably next week),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[242,59,46179,86,56,54,55,183,134804],"class_list":["post-348973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-features","tag-gb","tag-showcase","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-xbox","tag-xbox-developer-direct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}