Wires of magnesium alloys possess a high potential, e.g., as filler materials, for joining applications but also for biodegradable applications, such as suture materials. While the typical process of producing wires is based on a wire drawing process including intermediate heat treatment, direct extrusion by using adjusted dies to deal with high degrees of deformation enables manufacturing of wires in a one-step hot working process to some extent. Consequently, there are various ways to produce thin wires. Depending on the manufacturing process, different recrystallization mechanisms dominate the microstructure and texture development. Therefore, this work shows the impact of the wire manufacturing process, extrusion and drawing, on the mechanical property development of magnesium alloys. Wires were produced with different diameters of down to 0.2 mm via direct one-step extrusion as a hot forming route and were directly compared to conventional wire drawing routes with diameters down to 0.3 mm. The alloy dependent microstructure development is resolved with respect to the underlying recrystallization mechanisms, which determines the texture development and concurrently the strength and ductility properties of the wires.