Wolfenstein 3 and New id Software Game Confirmed as Xbox Turns 25

Xbox marked its 25th anniversary by confirming that Wolfenstein 3 is in production at MachineGames, the studio behind Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and that id Software has started work on its next game. The news arrived alongside an anniversary statement from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, which spent its final section arguing that technology will let far smaller teams build far bigger games.

Two games, one social media party

Sharma confirmed Wolfenstein 3 by posting a photo showing a few lines from its script. Around the same time, she pointed to the incoming Slaughter Mode for Doom: The Dark Ages Revelations and added that "the team is already working on its next game".

The official id Software account followed up with more detail. The next project comes from the studio's teams in Texas and Frankfurt, with game direction once again by Hugo Martin. "It'll be some time before we're ready to share more but we can't wait for you to see what we're working on," the studio wrote.

The confirmations land after a rough year for the studio's parent. id Software lost a number of staff in the mass layoffs that hit Microsoft's gaming division this year, so a new project being under way is welcome news for fans of the studio.

The next 25 years, according to Sharma

Sharma's 25th anniversary statement spends most of its length on the expected celebration of Xbox's history. The closing section turns to the future and the rising cost of making games.

"While modern games demonstrate the heights of human craft in ways unimaginable just decades ago, the cost, resources, and risk required to create them have grown just as dramatically," she wrote. "As a result, too many ideas never become games, and too many games fall short of what their creators imagined. For decades, this has been the unavoidable tradeoff of ambition. We must change this."

She continued: "Throughout human history, the scale of what we could create was determined by the people, capital, and resources we could command. That relationship is beginning to break. A single person will soon be able to wield capabilities that once required entire nations. A small team will be able to build worlds that today demand hundreds of developers and hundreds of millions of dollars. And our largest studios will be able to pursue ambitions as far beyond today's games as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is from its first entry in 1982."

The statement never names a technology. The framing, though, closely mirrors the pitch that generative AI advocates make about small teams doing the work of large ones. Set against the recent layoffs, that is likely to draw scrutiny from developers and players alike.

Also on Microsoft's plate

Microsoft remains the target of a BDS movement boycott over its reported ties to the Israeli military.

Neither Wolfenstein 3 nor the new id Software game has a release window, platform list, or title yet. Both studios have said only that more will come later.