Xbox Partner Preview highlights – Alien Deathstorm, Bluey’s Happy Snaps and more

GameCentral recaps the most intriguing trailers of today’s Xbox showcase, which featured new games Hunter: The Reckoning – Deathwish and Artificial Detective.

Microsoft’s next big first party showcase isn’t likelyuntil summertime, to coincide with Summer Game Fest, but in the meantime, it’s put together a short preview of upcoming Xbox games from third party publishers.

It namedropped three already announced games to drum up interest beforehand, but the final showcase showed off some entirely new titles while confirming some long overdue ports.

Rather than rattle off everything that was shown (you can watch the full showcase for yourself here), we’ve put together a list of the most exciting and noteworthy announcements of the showcase, complete with their trailers.

Hunter: The Reckoning – Deathwish

Based on the World Of Darkness tabletop roleplaying game (so the same origin as Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2), Hunter: The Reckoning – Deathwish is a new action role-playing shooter that sees you, as the name suggests, hunting monsters like vampires and werewolves.

It was the first announcement of the showcase and honestly one of the weaker trailers, though it’s piqued our curiosity for being developed by Teyon, the same studio behind the enjoyably decent RoboCop: Rogue City.

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn

Owlcat Games’ action role-playing take on TV show The Expanse is looking distinctly Mass Effect-ish in its newest trailer, with it now slated for a spring 2027 release window.

While there’s no sign of it being anything but a single-player adventure, there willbe a closed beta on Xbox, PlayStation 5, and PC running from April 26 all the way up to release, which you can take part in by buying one of the more expensive special editions from Owlcat’s website.

Stranger Than Heaven

After the disappointing Yakuza Kiwami 3, RGG Studio’s Stranger Than Heaven really needs to win back fan favour. Unfortunately, the new trailer didn’t reveal a whole lot new, beyond more snippets of action gameplay.

One detail that is brand is that it will feature five explorable cities across five different time periods, starting in 1915 and ending in 1965. A dedicated showcase for the game is scheduled for May 6 and will dive more deeply into its premise and gameplay.

Alien Deathstorm

Alien Deathstorm may have a name that sounds like an 80s straight to video movie but it comes from Sniper Elite and Atomfall developer Rebellion and is a new shooter/survival horror hybrid.

While it’s unrelated to the Alien franchises, Rebellion was responsible for a number of Alien Versus Predator games, back in the day, and this almost feels like a spiritual sequel to those.

Bluey’s Happy Snaps

Unironically one of the best-looking games of the showcase, Bluey’s Happy Snaps is bound to be a fun time for young, and old, fans of the TV show.

The premise appears to revolve around Bluey and her family visiting locations from the show and filling a photo album, with the game due to launch later this autumn.

Stalker 2: Cost Of Hope

After it finally launched in 2024, Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl is getting what is being described as its first major story expansion – Cost Of Hope – later this summer.

We couldn’t tell you what the story will be about, because it looks pretty weird, but Microsoft says it will take ‘dozens of hours’ to complete and add two new regions to explore, with a second untitled story expansion to come much later.

Hades 2/Dispatch

If you’re an Xbox owner who’s been holding out for ports of two of 2025’s most celebrated indie games, today’s showcase has justified your patience. Especially since Game of the Year nominee Hades 2 has long since left early access and will be more of a complete package when it comes to Xbox (and PlayStation 5) on April 14.

Telltale-esque superhero story Dispatch, meanwhile, launches on Xbox in the summer and while it mostly missed out on The Game Awards 2025, it’s set to take home potentially nine Baftas next month.

Artificial Detective

The final announcement of the showcase, Artificial Detective is a third person action adventure game where you play as a robot detective investigating the disappearance of humanity, accompanied by a lone human child.

Not much gameplay was shown, but the animations are certainly impressive and this is the debut title of indie studio Vivix’s, which consists of staff who’ve contributed to Call Of Duty, Control, and even Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots show.

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