One of Bethesda’s best games — and one of the great games of all time, in general — is getting a new release next week. More specifically, on August 11. That said, only Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and potentially PC users will be able to enjoy this new release because it’s coming courtesy of Xbox Game Pass. Whether it will be an Ultimate release only, or rather for Premium users as well, remains to be seen. It appears it’s going to be the latter, but this has not been confirmed.
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For August 11, Xbox has formally announced that one game will be added to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Premium, and PC Game Pass in the form of Date Everything. Meanwhile, Grounded 2 and Bounty Star are coming to Premium after releases in Ultimate and PC tiers. What it has not formally announced is that Wolfenstein 3D is also being added. This is presumably being kept as a surprise and may be a part of an announcement at QuakeCon, which runs until August 9. It could be paired with the leaked remaster of 2009’s Wolfenstein. Whatever the case, whatever the plan, Xbox has leaked the surprise by accidentally revealing its hand early, as you can see in the image below.
The Most Important First-Person Shooter Ever
Wolfenstein 3D is a milestone release in the industry. It came out in 1992 and essentially established the first-person shooter as we know it today. Further, it was really the first commercial hit within the genre, taking it from niche to mainstream, or at least as mainstream as video games were at this point.
Created by the legendary Tom Hall and John Romero, it is actually the third installment in the Wolfenstein series, which dates back to 1981 and Castle Wolfenstein. It was also notably the second release of id Software, and really its first big pop, as Commander Keen wasn’t as relevant. To this end, it is right there with DOOM, Halo: Combat Evolved, Half-Life, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as the most important first-person shooters ever.
In 2009, it got ported to the Xbox 360 alongside some upgrades, and it is specifically this version set to be made available via Xbox Game Pass. Whether this means other classic Wolfenstein games will come to Xbox Game Pass is anyone’s best guess, but so far only this one has leaked.
While it is novel to see Wolfenstein 3D coming back, it doesn’t hold up in 2026. Obviously, the first-person shooter has dramatically evolved since then. So has Wolfenstein as a series. If you don’t have any nostalgia for it, or, at the very least, this era of first-person shooters, there’s not much entertainment value with it. If you do, though, it packs a lot of nostalgia and is borderline transportive. And it comes alongside the recent word that Wolfenstein III is in active development.
