Wolfenstein 3 is real. Xbox chief executive Asha Sharma confirmed on November 12 that the next main game in the Nazi-fighting shooter series is officially in production at MachineGames, the Swedish studio behind the modern Wolfenstein games and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
The news came at the Seattle stop of Xbox’s 25th anniversary FanFest, the last of eight city events, and was posted on the company’s own Xbox Wire blog the same day. Two familiar voices are coming back: Brian Bloom returns as hero BJ Blazkowicz and Debra Wilson as resistance leader Grace Walker, according to MachineGames.
What Xbox said
Sharma kept her statement short. “This is a franchise with an important place in gaming history, and I’m excited to see the team continue its story,” she said. MachineGames added that the team is hard at work on the next entry.
That is all that has been confirmed. Xbox gave no release window, no platforms, no trailer and no subtitle. Any date or console list you see elsewhere is speculation until the studio says more.
A nine-year wait, in dates
The announcement ends a long stretch of guessing. Here is how the series got here:
- 2009: seven former Starbreeze Studios developers set up MachineGames in Uppsala, north of Stockholm.
- 2010: after rejections from several publishers, the team signs with Bethesda to make a Wolfenstein game and is bought by parent company ZeniMax Media.
- 2014: Wolfenstein: The New Order launches, followed by the prequel The Old Blood in 2015.
- October 27, 2017: Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus arrives, ending on a cliffhanger for Blazkowicz.
- 2019: the co-op spin-off Youngblood and the VR game Cyberpilot shift focus to BJ’s twin daughters.
- 2021: Microsoft completes its purchase of ZeniMax, bringing the studio under Xbox.
- 2024: MachineGames releases Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
- November 12, 2026: Wolfenstein 3 confirmed.
Counting from The New Colossus in October 2017 to this week, fans have waited just over nine years for a numbered follow-up. The studio’s public history suggests the third game has been in the works, in some form, since at least September 2018, which puts its development at roughly eight years before anyone said its name on stage.
Why it matters now
MachineGames is also creatively involved in a planned live-action Wolfenstein series for Amazon Prime Video, so the game and the show could end up feeding each other, much as the Fallout series did for Bethesda’s role-playing games. Badiyaa covered Bethesda’s other big confirmation this week, that Fallout 5 is in preproduction on Creation Engine 3.
The same Seattle showcase brought news for other Xbox studios. Sharma also said id Software, the company that created Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 and later Doom, has its next project in development, and Doom: The Dark Ages gets a free Slaughter Mode on November 16 for owners of its Revelations expansion or Premium Edition. Earlier in the week, the Golden Joystick Awards crowned Resident Evil Requiem its game of the year. More studio news is on the Badiyaa Gaming page.
The next scheduled Xbox talk is the Official Xbox Podcast on November 13, which is set to focus on new Fable footage rather than Wolfenstein.
Further reading
Image: Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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