State of Decay 3 Leak Potentially Reveals Xbox Exclusive's Distant Release Window
State of Decay 3 could have been announced a full seven years in advance.
A new leak tied to State of Decay 3 has potentially revealed when Xbox's upcoming survival game will be releasing — and it's far later than many fans probably anticipated. All the way back in 2020, Xbox announced that developer Undead Labs was working on State of Decay 3. This announcement came about in the form of a CG teaser, which means that no gameplay footage was shown off. In the time since this reveal, Xbox and Undead Labs have said absolutely nothing new about State of Decay 3, which has led to a number of questions from fans about the status of the project. Now, an answer for this silence seems to have come about, and it's due to the fact that SoD3 might still be years away.
According to the Art Station profile of Nora Shramek, who is the lighting lead at Undead Labs on State of Decay 3, the game is targeting a 2027 release window. If true, this means that there would be a nine-year gap between State of Decay 2 and State of Decay 3, which is quite lengthy, to say the least. It also means that Xbox would have announced State of Decay 3 seven years in advance of its arrival. Typically, games aren't unveiled this far in advance, but there's a chance that SoD3 could have just recently entered pre-production when it was shown off back in 2020.
It's worth stressing that in the time since this 2027 launch window was found on Shramek's profile, this mention has since been deleted. As such, it's not known if this was accidentally (or incorrectly) listed by Shramek or if this release window was merely a placeholder. We'll obviously find out one way or another in the months and years ahead, but for now, it sounds like Xbox fans might want to prepare to be patient for the next installment in the open-world zombie game.
Upcoming Xbox Exclusive Games
Even if State of Decay 3 is still roughly four years away from releasing, Xbox still has a number of other exclusives in the pipeline. This past month, Starfield was finally released across Xbox consoles and PC and will later be followed by Forza Motorsport, which launches in mere weeks. Looking further down the road, Xbox also has titles like Avowed, The Outer Wilds 2, Fable, South of Midnight, Everwild, and Clockwork Revolution, to name a few, in active development.
Not to mention, it's starting to seem likely that Microsoft will soon be closing its deal for Activision Blizzard. If this acquisition finally comes to pass, it means that Microsoft will become the new owner of franchises like Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon among many others. With this in mind, Xbox could start to develop more exclusive titles based on these properties in the years ahead, but for now, these plans remain on ice until the acquisition becomes official.