Microsoft will hold its Xbox Series X games showcase on the week of July 20

Microsoft will hold its Xbox Series X first-party games showcase on the week of July 20.

That’s according to information shared by journalist Jeff Grubb, corroborated by VGC’s own sources who confirmed the event is currently planned for July 23.

The July event will focus primarily on Series X games coming from Xbox Game Studios, but it will also confirm additional titles coming from third-party publishers, people with knowledge of Microsoft’s plans said.

Notably, Xbox will premiere the first Halo Infinite gameplay during the event, with the 343 shooter set to launch alongside Xbox Series X during the 2020 holiday season.

New Xbox studio The Initiative, the company formed in 2018 by veteran Tomb Raider, God of War and Uncharted creatives, will also unveil its first game during the July event, sources told VGC.

Xbox had previously indicated that it would announce The Initiative’s project sometime in 2020.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has suggested that The Initiative could be working on a legacy IP, long speculated to be Rare’s spy shooter Perfect Dark – which would match the gameplay described in a recent designer CV.

So far, all Xbox has said officially about The Initiative’s first project is that it has the mandate to create “ambitious and innovative game experiences” for Xbox.

However, in an interview at E3 2018 following the studio’s announcement, Spencer did suggest it could have been established to resurrect a legacy Xbox IP.

“When [studio head, Darrell Gallagher] left Activision we started to have a discussion about what he wanted to do next,” Spencer said at the time.

“I think he really loved his time with Crystal Dynamics working on Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, kind of re-working some of that franchise.

“We were talking about some things in our past that might be interesting… nothing to announce yet, but just some things that he might want to go work on.”

Further fuelling speculation, Spencer tweeted in January of this year that he had visited the Initiative team and that they were “challenging themselves to do new things (and old things) in new ways.”

Xbox has significantly expanded its first-party games production ahead of the next console generation and at least one franchise, RPG series Fable, is understood to be the subject of a revival at Microsoft’s Playground studio.

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