In a recent The Xbox Era podcast, Gamesbeat’s Jeff Grubb enumerated the Microsoft projects that he believes will be at E3 2022. According to Grubb, Microsoft could showcase Perfect Dark at E3 2022 and give it a 2023 or 2024 release date, as the game “will have had close to five full years of development” by then. In addition to Perfect Dark, Grubb also mentioned that Avowed will be part of the showcase as well as Starfield, Redfall, and Forza Motorsport 8. What’s interesting here is that Grubb’s statement assumes that E3 2022’s digital event will happen less than two months after mentioning that ESA could drop E3 2022 entirely. So far, the ESA hasn’t confirmed anything after canceling this year’s physical event. But, if the Perfect Dark reveal doesn’t happen at E3 2022, we’re not ruling out Grubb’s statement just yet. E3 is no longer the only premiere game-centric event with Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest seeing a lot of success as an “alternative” to E3. The last we heard about the Perfect Dark reboot is that Crystal Dynamics and The Initiative had joined forces for the project. Although Xbox Game Studios is publishing Perfect Dark, it is very much a Square Enix collaboration as The Initiative is a studio spearheaded by former Crystal Dynamics studio head, Darrell Gallagher. We don’t recommend holding out hope that Perfect Dark will appear at E3 2022 or anytime later this year. Microsoft has a slate of heavy-hitting games scheduled for the latter half of 2022 such as Redfall and Starfield, among others. Microsoft risks taking out the spotlight from titles that are close to being released for projects that might not even be here until 2024 if it chooses to reveal the likes of Perfect Dark. Of course, Microsoft could do something similar to what they did with Starfield at E3 2021 later this year. Ultimately, Microsoft will have to reveal their “hidden” Xbox IPs soon. E3 2022 is as good of a time as any for Microsoft to shine the spotlight on at least one of either Perfect Dark, Avowed, and Fabled if only to tide fans over until their official arrival.
