inXile Entertainment’s steampunk first-person RPG Clockwork Revolution received a 2027 launch window at the Xbox Games Showcase on June 7, arriving on Xbox Series X|S and PC with day-one availability on Game Pass. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma confirmed the same day that the game would not come to PlayStation, calling the stance permanent and posting the commitment to Xbox Wire.
The RPG is the first original AAA intellectual property from Brian Fargo’s studio since Microsoft absorbed it in November 2018, and the second game Microsoft has chosen as a permanent console exclusive alongside Gears of War: E-Day.
2027 and Day One on Game Pass
The June 7 showcase was Clockwork Revolution’s third major public appearance since its original reveal at an Xbox Games Showcase in June 2023. The new “Heist” trailer introduced more of the cast and gave the clearest look yet at Avalon’s class divisions and the time-manipulation system at the game’s center.
- 2027 – confirmed launch window for Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam and Microsoft Store)
- Day One – included in Game Pass, with cloud play covered under the same subscription
- Xbox Play Anywhere – a single purchase covers both console and PC at no additional cost
- 20+ hours – confirmed minimum story length by Brian Fargo, not counting side content
The Xbox Wire preview for the game confirmed Xbox Play Anywhere support and the full distribution package. The prior showcase in 2025 had shown the RPG without a firm date, leaving observers to anticipate a 2026 window. The confirmation of a later launch arrives alongside an explicit platform call that earlier showings had left open.
The “Heist” trailer also named several members of the Rotten Row Hooligans, the gang connected to Morgan Vanette’s story: Ulysses, Nazim, Erasmus, Hazel, and Anne. The flying automaton Prentice, who serves as companion and guide through the Chronometer’s branching realities, received expanded treatment showing her own skill tree and new ways to perceive the shifting city.
The City That Remembers Every Choice
Avalon is the game’s Victorian steampunk metropolis, a city where wealthy industrialists wear ornate clockwork prosthetics, steam trains arc overhead, and automaton guards patrol the streets below. Lady Ironwood, who rules Avalon with “ruthless precision” according to the trailer narration, has been secretly manipulating the timeline to keep the working class immobilized while her circle prospers above the city’s ash-choked lower districts.
Players control Morgan Vanette, a fully customizable protagonist who acquires the Chronometer, a mechanical device enabling travel between past and present versions of the city. Changes made during a past visit propagate forward, altering storefronts, character relationships, and the physical layout of entire districts when the player returns to the present. The game’s Steam store page describes the system as choices that “won’t just change the world, they’ll rewrite it.”
The RPG systems layered into the first-person framework include the following:
- Full character creation for Morgan Vanette, with stat choices that alter NPC dialogue and how in-game crime reports describe the player’s actions throughout the city
- Time-travel mechanics via the Chronometer, connecting past-visit decisions to present-day city states across districts, characters, and factions
- First-person combat using revolvers, lever-action repeaters, modified Gatling-style guns, and steam-powered equipment, all modifiable at a weapon bench with steampunk gadgets and deployable devices
- Companion abilities through Prentice, encountered early and carrying her own skill tree alongside abilities tied directly to the Chronometer
Building a city that keeps a permanent record of every player decision across time periods accounts for a dialogue script already running to 750,000 words and a character-creation system the developers describe as the single most expensive asset in the production.
inXile’s Biggest Swing Under Microsoft’s Roof
From Wasteland to a Victorian Skyline
inXile Entertainment traces its RPG lineage to crowdfunded revival projects from the early 2010s. Wasteland 2 arrived in 2014 after a successful Kickstarter campaign; Torment: Tides of Numenera followed in 2017, funded by a then-record $4 million raised on the same platform. Microsoft’s November 2018 acquisition brought Wasteland 3 to launch in 2020, still in the isometric, text-heavy tradition the studio had built its reputation on.
The steampunk RPG is the studio’s break from that template across almost every dimension. It is the studio’s first first-person title and its first major original IP under Microsoft. By the team’s own account, it is also the first project of full AAA scope and budget. Per inXile’s studio history page, the project is their next title after Wasteland 3, described only as “coming in due time.”
| Game | Year | Funding | Perspective |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wasteland 2 | 2014 | Crowdfunded, Kickstarter | Isometric |
| Torment: Tides of Numenera | 2017 | $4M Kickstarter (then-record) | Isometric |
| Wasteland 3 | 2020 | Microsoft-backed | Isometric |
| Clockwork Revolution | 2027 | Full AAA, Xbox Game Studios | First-person |
A Cast Built for AAA Scale
Concept and early development on the game began before Wasteland 3 shipped in 2020. Scaling toward AAA production meant hiring outside the studio’s previous talent pool. The team brought in developers from Rockstar Games, Bungie, and Blizzard Entertainment to improve cinematics, narrative interaction systems, lighting, animation, and gunplay, all areas where the studio’s earlier titles had traded graphical polish for story depth.
Brian Fargo, the studio’s founder and studio head, put the ambition plainly, calling the new game “probably our most ambitious title, probably by a factor of 10.” The dialogue script already runs to 750,000 words. Character creation, the system through which Morgan Vanette takes shape at the start of the game, is described by the team as the single most expensive asset in production: stat choices alter how NPCs address the player and how in-game news reports frame their actions throughout the city.
Shapeshifter Games and the Volition Connection
Reaching that production scale required a co-development partner. Embracer Group shut down Volition, the Saints Row studio, on August 31, 2023, with 183 people losing their jobs. Fargo and studio president Chris Keenan flew to Champaign, Illinois, shortly after, working with an Xbox team and former Volition leadership to formalize a new arrangement that could absorb that talent.
Shapeshifter Games emerged from those talks, founded by former Volition creative director Brian Traficante alongside colleagues including former producer Rob Loftus. The studio was announced as a co-development partner in January 2024 and had hired over ten former Volition employees by February of that year.
The connection between Fargo and the Volition lineage predates the Microsoft deal by decades. Fargo published Descent and FreeSpace through Interplay in the 1990s when Parallax Software, the predecessor to the Saints Row studio, was developing them for the publisher. “Co-dev groups are almost a given these days,” Fargo said at the January 2024 announcement, “but this one is special for us because of my long history with them going back to the Descent and FreeSpace games.”
Keenan added that the first game he ever tested in his career was Descent, giving the Shapeshifter partnership a continuity that traced back to before the studio’s own founding.
Xbox Draws a Permanent Exclusivity Line
A Permanent Exclusivity Call
For roughly two years, Xbox published several first-party games on PlayStation 5, including Starfield, Avowed, and Forza Horizon 5. Industry observers read the pattern as a signal that Microsoft was stepping back from the traditional hardware-exclusivity model, quietly letting the first-party exclusive pipeline thin.
Asha Sharma, who took over as head of Xbox in February 2026, confirmed at the June 7 showcase that both Gears of War: E-Day and the steampunk RPG would be permanent console exclusives. A post-showcase statement on Xbox Wire extended that commitment, designating both titles specifically while multi-platform publishing continued for the rest of the Xbox lineup.
We want people to choose Xbox because of great games and experiences. That also means giving you something that was made for Xbox.
Sharma confirmed the exclusivity applies to consoles specifically, in a statement also posted to Xbox Wire. Both games still ship on PC through Steam and the Microsoft Store. The official Xbox listing for the steampunk RPG confirms Xbox Series X|S and Windows 10/11 as supported platforms, consistent with Microsoft’s longstanding definition of “Xbox console exclusive.”
Gears as the 2026 Anchor
Gears of War: E-Day carries an October 6 release date, giving Microsoft a first-party console exclusive for 2026 ahead of the steampunk RPG’s launch window next year. The franchise title was also confirmed as day-one on Game Pass. Together, the two titles give Microsoft exclusive anchors in consecutive years on a platform that had spent the prior two years quietly thinning that lineup.
The wider June 7 showcase featured multi-platform titles including a new Senua game from Ninja Theory, Minecraft Dungeons II, and the next Call of Duty. Both console exclusives were named explicitly in the post-showcase statement: the franchise Gears title and the steampunk RPG from Fargo’s studio.
The city opens next year, and the hardware bet lands with it.
