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Summer Game Fest is collecting displaced E3 announcements into a season of online eventsThe fest is just getting started
The fest is just getting started
As we’ve likely all heard,E3 is off this year thanks to the global Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. To replace the week-long announce-o-rama that happens each June, Geoff Keighley (Mr. Game Awards andDeath Strandingcameo man) has announced a four month long online event called theSummer Game Festrunning from May until August. Looks like he’s corralled all the usual big swingers together to deliver their planned announcements, trailers, and demos under his new banner. The king is dead. Long live the king, I suppose.
“In these uncertain and challenging times, it’s more important than ever that video games serve as a common and virtual connection point between us all,” Keighley says. After E3 was cancelled, a couple publishers like Microsoft and Ubisoft expressed that they’d still be planning to deliver announcements in a digital format, though they’d not yet explained their actual plans. It seems that Summer Game Fest is giving them a different banner to organise beneath, albeit in a much longer format.
The list of companies participating is pretty lengthy. We’ll be hearing from the likes of 2K, Activision, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Riot, Sony, and quite a few more. Interestingly, Bethesda’s shown up on the list of names after announcing that theywouldn’t be doing a digital showcase this June. Warner Brothers are participating too, less surprising given that this year was rumored to be their first E3 showcase.
In the trailer below you can spot plenty of games that we’ll be hearing about:Baldur’s Gate 3,Cyberpunk 2077,The Last Campfire,Marvel’s Avengers, and presumably lots more.
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“As part of Summer Game Fest season, Steam, Xbox and other platforms will offer fans access to playable, limited time demonstrations and trials of select game content,” says the Summer Game Fest announcement. Apparently they’re folding in theSteam Game Festivalfor June as part of SGF. “Geoff Keighley will host special pre and post shows for flagship publisher events,” which they say will run on several different platforms, including Mixer, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
It’s good to see someone organising all the kittens so they don’t run off in separate directions without E3 playing host. Honestly though, a protracted four months of dripping announcements is exactly what I feared an E3-less summer would look like.
The Summer Game Fest begins this month and will run through August with a slew of “digital news, in-game events, playable content, and more.” We do like some playable content, don’t we? You can keep up with the SGF ontheir website, though you can expect us RPS newsfolk to be relaying the PC bits to you right here as well.
Whatever you call it, hit ourE3 2020tag for more from this summer’s blast of gaming announcements, trailers, and miscellaneous marketing. Check outthe PC games at the PlayStation 5 show,everything at the PC Gaming Show, andall the trailers from the Xbox showcase, for starters.
