What Was Up With That Summer Game Fest Showcase?

While E3 is gone, Geoff Keighley, lord of The Game Awards, has tried to replace it with Summer Game Fest, a nebulous collection of reveals and mini-events that does have one main showcase full of its biggest slate of games, and that aired yesterday.

It was…not great. 65% of Keighley’s own Twitter followers gave it a C or D grade in a poll he put up.

While E3, despite its issue, used to be the biggest singular event of the year, times have changed. The Game Awards is probably the biggest now, an uncomfortable mix of awards and big reveals, but things have changed. Namely, studios like Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, EA, Take-Two and Ubisoft are doing whatever they want, whenever they want with their own events. Microsoft has a huge Xbox showcase Sunday that will no doubt have multiple announcements more interesting than anything in the Summer Game Fest one, as why would they lend it any reveals?

The result was a really odd mix of games. While it was cool Keighley did include more indie titles, it was strange because there was an entirely separate indie showcase later, and in hindsight it felt more like it was filling time.

There were moments like Star Wars Outlaws showing a small bit of footage before saying you could see more at Ubisoft Forward. Valorant paid for a spot that was almost purely celebrating a console release for the game and its esports division. There was a Supercell mobile commercial starring Chris Hemsworth and Will Arnett that looked like it cost $30 million dollars. The grand finale reveal was…not a reveal. It was a new gameplay trailer for Phantom Blade Zero, a cool-looking game, but this was not the first time we’ve seen it.

Keighley himself knew that this was coming, saying this would be a “light” year, but I do think that more and more games and publishers are realizing they probably don’t need the event given how they can organize their own ones, and that’s really one of the reasons E3 died.

The Game Awards will continue to exist as it is the highest profile award show the industry has, and as such, we’ll probably keep seeing reveals there. But this is an era where Rockstar is going to drop a new GTA 6 trailer whenever they want, or Xbox will lineup Perfect Dark, Fable and Gears of War showcases in its own thing without needing a third party.

We’ll see what Summer Game Fest holds. There are some cool aspects to it, but it does not feel nearly as relevant as E3 did in its heyday, even if Keighley wants to replace it. At this point, he just can’t.

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