Xbox's Starfield-style "Redacted Direct" is almost certainly for Call of Duty
It looks like Call of Duty is the "beloved franchise" Xbox is teasing for a Summer Game Fest deep dive
The Xbox Games Showcase for 2024 has been confirmed, and Microsoft is teasing a big deep dive on an unannounced game in the style of last year's Starfield Direct. The small teaser all but confirms this "Redacted Direct" is for the next Call of Duty game – rumored to be Black Ops 6.
Xbox describes this Redacted Direct as "a special deep-dive into the next installment of a beloved franchise" that will air immediately after the Xbox Games Showcase on June 9. A teaser image shows a shield-style logo with three dog heads in orange, overlaying an image of the US capitol building. If you zoom in real close on the lower right of that image, you'll see a not-quite-fully-concealed Activision logo.
After the Xbox Activision deal, Microsoft says this will be the "first Showcase featuring games from our portfolio of studios across Activision, Blizzard, Bethesda and Xbox Game Studios." Call of Duty is traditionally an annual franchise, so it'd be a real shocker if we didn't get a game this year, and the 2024 Xbox Showcase would make perfect sense as a venue for that announcement.
On top of that, previous rumors had suggested that Call of Duty 2024 would be another Black Ops game, and the orange and black color scheme of this teaser matches the aesthetics of that subseries. If all the official hints aren't enough for you, Tom Warren at The Verge is reporting from inside sources that the Direct is definitely looking COD-shaped.
The Showcase - and the rest of the Summer Game Fest schedule for 2024 - will certainly tells about a lot of upcoming Xbox Series X games to look forward to.
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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.