"We are not tied to a console release." We got Hollow Knight: Silksong release date news after all, but it had nothing to do with Xbox Ally

Another big gaming conference has come and went, with Summer Game Fest, Microsoft's big Xbox Games Showcase, and others giving folks a close look at countless new and upcoming games coming in 2025 and beyond. All in all, it was a great weekend to be a gamer — unless, of course, you're a Hollow Knight: Silksong fan that'd dared to hope for some concrete release date news.

If you, like me, begrudgingly put on the clown makeup and figured you'd see Silksong get a new trailer and a release date, you were also probably disappointed yet again by the sequel's complete absence from Summer Game Fest outside of a playful, but painful jab from Geoff Keighley. I then doubled down to become the whole circus and prayed Silksong would appear at the Xbox Games Showcase, and lo and behold, it did — but only long enough for Xbox president Sarah Bond to reveal it'd be available to play day one on Microsoft's Xbox Ally handheld slated for a Holiday 2025 release.

Considering we already knew Silksong is coming out at some point this year and that the holiday period could refer to a date as late as Christmas, this essentially told us nothing — and I woke up today planning to write about my dismay over that. As it turns out, though, we actually did get some noteworthy Hollow Knight: Silksong release date news. It just didn't come from Microsoft's big show, or any of the other major presentations.

Instead, it comes directly from the official Hollow Knight Discord server, where Silksong marketing and publishing manager Matthew "Leth" Griffin narrowed down the game's release window considerably while also explaining that the game's release date has no connection to the Xbox Ally launch.

"I confirmed BEFORE holiday," he explained to fans in order to clear up confusion. "We are not tied to a console release."

So, there you have it — Silksong is expected to release ahead of the holiday season, which means a December and likely a November release date, too, isn't what Team Cherry is planning. And given that shows like Summer Game Fest and the Xbox Games Showcase would have been the perfect place to announce a summer launch, the most likely outcome seems to be a September or October release date.

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Originally announced in February 2019, Hollow Knight: Silksong was expected to release in the first half of 2023 but was delayed indefinitely as the developers chose "to take the time to make the game as good as we can." Fast forward to this year, and after assuring fans that Silksong was still on the way, Team Cherry included nine whole seconds of gameplay footage in Nintendo's Switch 2 Direct in April that listed a 2025 release window. A day later, Xbox reminded users that Silksong is coming to Game Pass.

Then, in the lead up to the Summer Game Fest presentation these past several days, fans using SteamDB noticed several backend updates made to Hollow Knight: Silksong's Steam page. This led to widespread speculation and hope that we'd see the title get a full release date this weekend, As it turns out, we didn't — but we did, at the very least, get this.

Silksong, like the original Hollow Knight, is a Metroidvania platformer with an emphasis on difficult, but rewarding combat and careful, steady progression through an interconnected world. The original saw a nameless warrior known simply as "the Knight" fighting to rid the insectoid kingdom of Hallownest of a plague; in the sequel, you'll play as Hallownest's warrior-princess Hornet as she finds herself in a dangerous new realm.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, the new Xbox handhelds, Windows PC, PS5, PS4, the newly released Nintendo Switch 2, and the original Nintendo Switch. On Xbox and PC devices, playing through Xbox Game Pass is also an option.