Technologies

Biggest Games Coming in 2023: All the Release Dates You Need to Know

All the games delayed in 2021 and 2022 are hitting in 2023. Between The Legend of Zelda, Starfield and Final Fantasy 16 alone, it’s going to be a big one.

The last few years have been rough on the games industry. Development teams disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic had to delay big games — Starfield and the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom chief among them. But the losses of 2021 and 2022 are the gains of 2023. Free up some weekends, because there are a lot of games that look worth playing this year.

This list of release dates for notable 2023 titles is already packed, but for now we’ve added only games set for launch in the first half of the year. More will be added as the year progresses and we get more concrete dates.

2022 was a sparse-but-good year for games. We got an open-world Pokemon, the long-awaited sequel to God of War and, of course, the tour de force that was Elden Ring. Only time will determine if the games of 2023 reach those same heights, but the numbers are certainly in our favor.

Nearly two months into 2022 and we’ve already had two big releases in Fire Emblem Engage and the long-delayed Hogwarts Legacy. Let’s just hope Zelda doesn’t get delayed again. Here are all the big PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch games to keep track of in 2023.

Horizon Call of the Mountain (PSVR 2)

Release date: Feb. 22.

One of Sony’s goals for 2023 is to make VR happen. To help do that, it’s enlisted Guerilla Games to make Horizon Call of the Mountain, a virtual reality spinoff to Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West. You won’t be playing as Aloy, but will rather take up the hunter bow of Ryas, a member of the Shadow Carja tribe that featured prominently in Zero Dawn. Being a VR game, Call of the Mountain looks to feature less open-world roaming, but more exhilerating climbing, exploration and bow-based combat. It launches alongside the PlayStation VR2 headset on Feb. 22.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC)

Release date: March 3.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a new IP with a pedigree: It’s developed by Team Ninja, the gang behind the acclaimed Ninja Gaiden and the even more acclaimed Nioh franchise. Wo Long is set during the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history — roughly 220 AD — but features plenty of fantastical (and grotesque) beasts to slay. Like Nioh, this looks to be inspired by Dark Souls, meaning you should be prepared to die. A lot.

Resident Evil 4 Remake (PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC)

Release date: March 24.

After the roaring success of the Resident Evil 2 Remake, Capcom is at it again. Originally released in 2005 as a GameCube exclusive (imagine that) Resident Evil 4 is the most acclaimed title in the illustrious franchise. Because of its fanfare, Capcom has ported and remastered Resident Evil 4 over and over again. Hopefully you don’t have RE4 fatigue, because it’s now getting proper remake treatment.

If you’ve never played Resident Evil 4, and if Capcom can do for it what it did for Resident Evil 2, this is sure to be a must-play.

Crime Boss: Rockay City (PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S)

Release date: March 28.

We know Rockstar is developing Grand Theft Auto 6, but it’s still yonks away. Crime Boss: Rockay City, by 505 Games, is clearly inspired by GTA, and may help fill the GTA-shaped hole in your heart while you wait for the next big open-world crime bonanza.

Crime Boss: Rockay City is a first-person game about 90’s Florida turf wars, and it’s designed to be played alone or with friends. The most attention-grabbing feature of the game is its celeb-heavy cast. Kill Bill’s Michael Madson stars as the protagonist, Travis Barker, and the supporting cast features Kim Basinger, Danny Trejo, Chuck Norris and Vanilla Ice.

Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp (Switch)

Release date: April 21.

If you weren’t a big Game Boy Advance player, you likely have no love for Advance Wars. But don’t sleep on Advance Wars. It’s some fine turn-based strategy — damn fine, even. Its developers — Intelligent Systems — helped make some of Nintendo’s biggest-ever games. That includes Fire Emblem, Metroid and a little number called Super Mario Bros. Re-Boot Camp features Advance Wars 1 and 2, brings their graphics forward by about 20 years, adds voice acting and online play.

Redfall

Release date: May 2.

Redfall looks like a mix of Deathloop and The Last of Us. It takes place in Redfall, a fictional Massachusetts town that was flowing along swimmingly until a swarm of vampires took it over and cut it off from the outside world. Like in The Last of Us, you’ll explore a town brimming with remnants of the before times, but the game looks to have a less serious, more quirky attitude about it, similar to Deathloop. That makes sense, as Redfall is developed by Arkane Austin, a sister studio to Deathloop creators Arkane Lyon.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch)

Release date: May 12.

Not much needs to be said here. The Legend of Zelda is one of gaming’s most renowned franchises, and 2017’s Breath of the Wild is incontestably one of the greatest games ever. Nintendo has a habit of delaying Zelda games — Tears of the Kingdom has already been delayed once — so hopefully the May 12 date sticks.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC)

Release date: May 26.

Last year’s Gotham Knights was unable to step out of Batman’s Arkham City-sized shadow, so now the Suicide Squad has a perfect opportunity to upstage the good guys… and then kill them.

Though Gotham Knights was a sequel of sorts to Batman’s Arkham series, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is its true spiritual successor. It’s developed by Rocksteady, the same studio that developed the Arkham trilogy. The game lets you play as four members of the Suicide Squad — Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang and King Shark — and includes Kevin Conroy’s last recorded performance as Batman.

Street Fighter 6 (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC)

Release date: June 2.

Street Fighter 6 is the first major new game in the franchise since 2016. As you can imagine, it’s expected to have dramatically improved visuals. There will also be five new characters, with more to potentially be announced. Other new additions include a single-player adventure mode and in-game commentary, a welcome feature for esports fans. But as nice as those extras are, the Street Fighter series is all about its rock-solid fighting system, which is simple enough for beginners to have fun but deep enough that dedicated fighters will spend years to mastering it. As long as that still works, this should be a banger.

Diablo 4 (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC)

Release date: June 6.

Last year we got an updated version of Overwatch, now it’s Diablo’s turn to get supercharged. Diablo 4, the latest major installation in Activision Blizzard’s long-running action RPG franchise, couldn’t come sooner. Fans have been awaiting Diablo 4’s arrival since its announcement in 2019, a whole pandemic ago.

Final Fantasy 16 (PS5)

Release date: June 22.

I’m going to be honest with you, I’ve watched various Final Fantasy 16 trailers several times and I still have no clue what this game is about. There’s a fight going on between six different countries, and somehow giant summons like Ifrit are involved. I’m not super sure, but the fact that Final Fantasy is coming to a new console generation is reason enough for this game to turn into a massive cultural event. (It’ll be a PS5 exclusive until the end of the year.) It may also be the first of two big Final Fantasy releases this year, with Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s sequel potentially — but probably not — hitting during the holiday season.

Pikmin 4

Release date: July 21.

Pikmin 3 was one of the many great games that didn’t get the spotlight it deserved thanks to being on the woefully unsuccessful WiiU console. Though that was partially rectified by the Pikmin 3 Deluxe port to the Switch, Pikmin 4 gives the little critters a better shot at greatness. The first mainline Pikmin game in a decade, it launches on July 21.

Hollow Knight: Silksong (Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC)

Release date: First half of 2023.

Hollow Knight, launched in 2017, was praised for being one of the best Metroidvania games without the words «Metroid» or «Vania» in its title. In 2023, indie developer Team Cherry wants to do it all again. You’ll play as a different character — a boss you fought in the original game — but the core gameplay here is the same. Explore, fight a bunch of dudes, get lost, explore some more, repeat a few times and ultimately succeed. I, for one, am ready.

Hollow Knight: Silksong was announced on June 12, 2022, and Microsoft said it would launch within a year of that date.

Forza Motorsport (Xbox Series X|S, PC)

Release date: Second half of 2023.

Forza Horizon brought the driving franchise’s open-world exploration to the Xbox Series X|S, but in 2023 we go back to Forza’s driving-sim roots. This game will be more similar to Gran Turismo 7, which hit the PS5 last year, trading open roads for closed tracks. A little more finesse, a little more professional. No matter their flavor, Forza games can be relied on to provide some delicious drives — and 2023’s Forza Motorsport should be the prettiest one yet.

Starfield (Xbox Series X|S, PC)

Release date: First half of 2023.

Like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Starfield was one of 2022’s great delays. Originally slated for a Nov. 11 release, it was pushed back to the «first half of 2023.» It’s for the best: Starfield is a game from the same Bethesda studio that made Skyrim and Fallout 4.

If done right, Starfield could be a game that people will be playing for years to come. There are apparently 1,000 planets to explore, so an extra few layers of polish will go a long way. If Tears of the Kingdom is most predicted to be 2023’s best game, Starfield may be its most ambitious.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Luna)

Release date: 2023.

Ubisoft is taking an unusual approach with Assassin’s Creed Mirage. After years of «bigger is better,» Ubisoft is now scaling down and trying the «less is more» approach. In announcing Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the company boasted it to be a «shorter, more narrative-driven game than recent entries in the series.» Sounds good to me. Mirage is set in 9th century Baghdad, a couple decades before Valhalla, and stars Basim, who played a supporting role in that game.

Lies of P (PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S)

Release date: 2023.

Lies of P sounds gnarly as hell: It’s the story of Pinocchio reimagined as a 2023 Dark Souls. Your goal is to find Mr. Geppetto, and a synopsis for the game talks about needing to lie your way through a rough city to do that. That’s all well and good, but from Lies of P’s trailer it looks like combat will be the real star of the show here.

Spider-Man 2 (PS5)

Release date: Fall 2023.

I didn’t like 2018’s Spider-Man as much as I’d hoped to: It was good, but no Batman: Arkham City. Almost everyone else loved it, though: Spider-Man has an 8.7 rating on Metacritic, and beat out Arkham City to become the best-selling superhero game ever. Spider-Man 2 will launch in late 2023 exclusively for the PS5, and will feature both Peter Parker and Miles Morales, who starred in his own 2020 spin-off. The Spider-Men will need to combine their powers in this game, because there’s a wild Venom on the loose.

Technologies

Tariffs Explained: Latest on Trump’s Shifting Import Tax Plan, and What It Means

Technologies

Apple, I’m (Sky) Blue About Your iPhone 17 Air Color

Commentary: The rumored new hue of the iPhone 17 Air is more sky blah than sky blue.

I can’t help but feel blue about the latest rumor that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air will take flight in a subtle, light-hued color called sky blue.

Sky blue isn’t a new color for Apple. It’s the featured shade of the current M4 MacBook Air, a shimmer of cerulean so subtle as to almost be missed. It’s silver left too close to an aquarium; silver that secretly likes to think it’s blue but doesn’t want everyone else to notice.

Do Apple employees get to go outside and see a real blue sky? It’s actually vivid, you can check for yourself. Perhaps the muted sky blue color reflects a Bay Area late winter/early spring frequent layer of clouds like we typically see here in Seattle.

«Who cares?» you might find yourself saying. «Everyone gets a case anyway.» I hear you and everyone else who’s told me that. But design-focused Apple is as obsessive about colors as they are about making their devices thinner. And I wonder if their heads are in the clouds about which hues adorn their pro products.

Making the case for a caseless color iPhone

I’m more invested in this conversation than most — I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t wrap my phone in a case. I find cases bulky and superfluous, and I like to be able to see Apple’s design work. Also, true story, I’ve broken my iPhone screen only twice: First when it was in a «bumper» that Apple sent free in response to the iPhone 4 you’re-holding-it-wrong Antennagate fiasco, and second when trying to take long exposure starry night photos using what I didn’t realize was a broken tripod mount. My one-week-old iPhone 13 Pro slipped sideways and landed screen-first on a pointy rock. A case wouldn’t have saved it.

My current model is an iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium — which I know seems like avoiding color entirely — but previously I’ve gone for colors like blue titanium and deep purple. I wanted to like deep purple the most but it came across as, in the words of Patrick Holland in his iPhone 14 Pro review, «a drab shade of gray or like Grimace purple,» depending on the light.

Pros can be bold, too

Maybe the issue is too many soft blues. Since the iPhone Pro age began with the iPhone 11 Pro, we’ve seen variations like blue titanium (iPhone 15 Pro), sierra blue (iPhone 13 Pro) and pacific blue (iPhone 12 Pro).

Pacific blue is the boldest of the bunch, if by bold you mean dark enough to discern from silver, but it’s also close enough to that year’s graphite color that seeing blue depends on the surrounding lighting. By comparison, the blue (just «blue») color of the iPhone 12 was unmistakably bright blue.

In fact, the non-Pro lines have embraced vibrant colors. It’s as if Apple is equating «pro» with «sophisticated,» as in «A real pro would never brandish something this garish.» I see this in the camera world all the time: If it’s not all-black, it’s not a «serious» camera.

And yet I know lots of pros who are not sophisticated — proudly so. People choose colors to express themselves, so forcing that idea of professionalism through color feels needlessly restrictive. A bright pink iPhone 16 might make you smile every time you pick it up but then frown because it doesn’t have a telephoto camera.

Color is also important because it can sway a purchase decision. «I would buy a sky blue iPhone yesterday,» my colleague Gael Cooper texted after the first rumor popped online. When each new generation of iPhones arrive, less technically different than the one before, a color you fall in love with can push you into trading in your perfectly-capable model for a new one.

And lest you think Apple should just stick with black and white for its professional phones: Do you mean black, jet black, space black, midnight black, black titanium, graphite or space gray? At least the lighter end of the spectrum has stuck to just white, white titanium and silver over the years.

Apple never got ahead by being beige

I’m sure Apple has reams of studies and customer feedback that support which colors make it to production each year. Like I said, Apple’s designers are obsessive (in a good way). And I must remind myself that a sky blue iPhone 17 Air is a rumored color on a rumored product so all the usual caveats apply.

But we’re talking about Apple here. The scrappy startup that spent more than any other company on business cards at the time because each one included the old six-color Apple logo. The company that not only shaped the first iMac like a tipped-over gumdrop, that not only made the case partially see-through but then made that cover brilliant Bondi blue.

Embrace the iPhone colors, Apple.

If that makes you nervous, don’t worry: Most people will put a case on it anyway.

Technologies

Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.

The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea.

According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»

The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»

Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.

Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»

K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.

More research to do on finding life on K2-18b

The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.

«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»

Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»

The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»

As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.

«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»