In the midst of everything happening at The Game Awards this evening, Variety has suddenly come out with a Matt Booty interview that reveals the Xbox Developer Direct showcase will officially be returning in January of 2026.
Booty says there's way too much to fit into one show, but confirms Playground Games (the developer behind Fable and Forza Horizon) will be involved in the event.
“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."
"So I will tell you that Playground Games [the developer behind the “Fable” and “Forza Horizon 6″ 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.”
As you can see, Booty is really hyping up how many first-party releases are coming in 2026 for Xbox here, and he once again mentions this when talking about the 25th anniversary of Xbox and how exciting of a year it's going to be.
He even mentions a "Halo Remastered" collection, which we assume means Halo: Campaign Evolved.
"We’ve announced things like the ‘Halo Remastered’ 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.”
Xbox Developer Direct is always one of the most exciting showcases of the year, and it sounds like January's version is going to potentially be the best yet. We'll have to wait just a little longer until we get an exact date for it.