Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Hogwarts Legacy Could Be The Biggest Games of This Holiday Season

gamerant.com:

Earlier today, Bethesda announced that it was delayingRedfall and Starfield into the first half of 2023. This is to make sure that both games are polished enough for release. Given Bethesda’s track record of buggy launches, this is perhaps the best choice for Starfield, but it notably leaves a huge hole in the holiday season.

For example, August’s main games are Saints Row and Thymesia, September’s is Splatoon 3, and Forspoken and Gotham Knights are the only confirmed October releases as of this writing. November has lost Starfield, leaving it completely blank. It stands to reason that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, as well asCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will help feel that void, but those are to be expected. In other words, the busiest time of the year is currently lacking major Xbox and PlayStation games.

Bethesda Announces Redfall Delay

What fills this hole remains to be seen, but Microsoft may not have anything it can put out.Starfield was its big 2022 release, and that pushes everything back. It could perhaps surprise fans with a new game reveal at Xbox Game Pass, but that remains to be seen. When it comes to Sony, it doesn’t tend to focus on the holiday season as much as other companies. For example, its last exclusive release in 2021 was Death Stranding: Director’s Cut in September, with Kena and Deathloop also releasing that same month.

What this means is that a lot of the holiday season may fall on third-party titles, and the only two that seem likely to get confirmed release dates for the holiday season—barring the ever-present possibility of a delay—areAvatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Hogwarts Legacy. Everything here comes with the possibility of being delayed, as Starfield proves.

Now, this isn’t to say there won’t