Summer Game Fest will return this year on June 7th at 2pm PT/5pm ET.
Hosted by Markham, Ontario’s Geoff Keighley (The Game Awards), the 5th annual event will kick off on that day with a two-hour showcase featuring looks at upcoming games.
It will be streamed live from the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles on YouTube, Twitch and other international partners. Fans can attend the showcase, with tickets going live on May 7th through Ticketmaster.
Additionally, a private Summer Game Fest Play Days event will be held from June 8th to 10th, allowing media and influencers to play upcoming games and share their impressions with their audiences.
More details on Summer Game Fest, including some of the featured games, will be revealed leading up to the show. For context, last year’s event featured the likes of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Alan Wake 2, Nicolas Cage in Canadian-made Dead by Daylight and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
Altogether, SGF brought in a massive 34 million viewers. Since the start of the pandemic, the show has occupied the June window once held by the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3), which was cancelled for multiple years before ultimately being killed entirely.
However, SGF has also garnered some criticism. Last year, the show came under fire for not featuring a single woman during the showcase. Keighley claimed Melanie Liburd, the co-lead of Alan Wake 2, had cancelled due to scheduling conflicts, but that only led to further controversy since that seemed to suggest there were no other women who could have been included.
It should be noted that confirmation of SGF’s dates also gives us an idea of when to expect showcases from some gaming publishers. Historically, most, if not all, of the gaming companies have held events either at or adjacent to E3, and that has continued to a degree with SGF.
For instance, both Xbox and Ubisoft held conferences last year during the same week as SGF. This year, Microsoft, in particular, will likely want to promote its recently acquired Activision Blizzard properties. The company has already confirmed that a showcase will indeed happen this June, so presumably, it will take place around June 7th to 10th.
Image credit: Summer Game Fest
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