After five long years of near silence, missed deadlines, and a whole lot of “maybe next time,” 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hollow Knight: Silksong finally has a release window. Microsoft confirmed it will be coming later this year during its Xbox Games Showcase this past weekend. But instead of feeling excited, I just feel...weird. A little underwhelmed. Maybe even a bit used. This 🅺wasn’t a gran✅d reveal for one of the most beloved indie titles of all times. It was a sales pitch for a rushed handheld console.

Five Years Of Hype For... This?

The showcase announcement came not with a heartfelt message from Team Cherry, but during a presentation about a new Xbox handheld device, the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:ROG Xbox Ally. President of Xbox Sarah Bond took to the stage and casually dropped Silksong’s release window while simultaneously unveiling the new console. The game even appeared in the reveal trailer 🍌with never-b🤡efore-seen gameplay footage, as if it were just another feature to round out a corporate marketing plan.

I understand what Microsoft was going fo💛r here as it tried ไto attach the hype for Silksong to its long-rumoured handheld, but the way in which it unfolded made the moment feel cheap.

This is a game that’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:been mythologized by its own absence. First announced back in February 2019 as a follow-up to the critically acclaimed 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hollow Knight, Silksong was originally supposed to be a simple expansion before snowballing into a full sequel, seemingly much more ambitious than the original. We received a brief demo at E3 2019, then… nothing for years. A gameplay trailer surfaced in 2022, promising a release within the next 12 months. But by 2023, that promise quietಌly dissolved into an indefinite delay. For a while, Silksong wasn’t just delayed, it was a punchline. A “Where's Silksong?” in every livestream chat. A white whale destined to roam the indie gaming seas for eternity.

And after all that, the game reappears not as a centerpiece, but as a supporting act to a hand🌞held nobody asked for?

You Wanted Silksong News, They Gave You A Sales Funnel

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-handheld. I love my Switch. I respect what Steam Deck is doing. But the way Microsoft used Silksong, a long-absent, beloved 🦩title🌊, to prop up its own hardware reveal rubs me the wrong way. It felt less like a celebration and more like marketing manipulation. It was as if the game was finally allowed to crawl out of the shadows, not because it was ready, but because it fit someone else’s product strategy. There would be much more to celebrate if Silksong was revealed with its own trailer by its own team instead of feeling tertiary to something else.

To be fair, Silksong will 🐼launch on everything: Nintendo Switch 1 and 2, PlayStation 4 and 5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X. It’ll be on Game Pass from day one. You won’t need the Xbox Ally to play it. But the announcement made it feel like that was the point, that Silksong was being positioned as a system seller, rather than a long-awaited sequel for millions of patient fans.

That’s what stings. It’s the sense that the moment wasn’t really for us. It was fo🌌r them.

Hollow Knight𒉰: Silksong is finally real. And yes, I’ll play the hell out of it when it arrives. But the way its return was handled left me feeling like the emotional payoff had been hijacked, not by the developers, but by the marketing machine.