Long-awaited indie sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong will be publicly playable at Gamescom on Microsoft’s Xbox booth, before its highly-anticipated launch, due sometime before the end of 2025.
Silksong sounds like it will be one of the booth’s biggest draws, alongside a first public outing for the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X — the third-party portable Xbox consoles also out later this year.
The Outer Worlds 2, Xbox’s biggest first-party game for the rest of this year that’s not Call of Duty, meanwhile gets a “theater experience”, which sounds like it’ll be hands-off demo.
In terms of other playable stuff, well, Obsidian’s garden sequel Grounded 2 will be there, if you don’t want to just play the Game Preview version at home. More excitingly, Ninja Gaiden 4 gets a first public hands-on appearance, while Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is there with an “exciting city update”.
Keen to play the new Indiana Jones and the Great Circle DLC? Us too, though on the Gamescom show floor Microsoft is simply showing the base game. (It’s very good but, uh, we played it last year.)
From non-Xbox studios, meanwhile, Microsoft has a long list of playable demos — including the likes of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater and Borderlands 4, plus the Xbox versions of Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake Integrade.
If you’re visiting Gamescom, the world’s biggest video games show in terms of its public attendance, Xbox will reside in its usual home within Hall 7 of the Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany from August 21 to 24. Alternatively, keep an eye on IGN for all of our coverage direct from the show floor.
Silksong developer Team Cherry recently said that its game was on track to launch later in 2025 but before the holidays.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
