4 games we don’t expect to see at Summer Game Fest 2024

Summer Game Fest 2024 is here and the biggest companies from across the industry have descended upon Los Angeles.

While the hype and chaos of E3 hasn’t quite returned, this weekend will still see dozens of new announcements and trailers for the biggest games of the year. While there will be some heavy hitters at the show, however, when the dust settles next week we’ll realise there were plenty of games that were missing in action.

Whether this is due to the franchise themselves being on hold, or the lengthy development cycles of modern video games, there are plenty of titles that will find their way onto Summer Game Fest prediction bingo cards but won’t make it to the show.

Below, we’ve listed some of the titles we think will miss the big shows, and some of the reasons why.

Project 007 – IO Interactive

Last release: Hitman  3 (2021)

When the world first learned that IO, the team behind the wonderful Hitman franchise, was making a James Bond game, the gaming audience let out a collective “that makes perfect sense”.

While the Bond franchise typically isn’t as wacky as the exploits of Agent 47, IO has shown that it’s perfected the art of creating vibrant, colourful, camp playgrounds for players to sneak through and take down their enemies.

This is the exact marriage of a license and a developer that as soon as you’re told about it, the game forms in your head instantly. While there are certain mechanical expectations from a Bond game (such as driving) that we’ve not seen from IO in a while, it’s certainly one of our most anticipated releases.

According to IO’s financial results from 2023, however, we shouldn’t expect to see the game released until 2025, so while we’re probably not far from the first real trailer and gameplay reveal of Project 007, it’s likely a bit too early to be at this show.

Everwild – Rare

Last release: Sea of Thieves (2018)

Everwild was revealed in 2020 and since then there has been silence, at least officially.

In 2021, sources told VGC that Everwild had been ‘completely rebooted’ following the departure of its creative director.

According to people with knowledge of Everwild’s development, the game’s design was essentially “restarted from scratch”, and with the length of modern development, it’s possible we’re still multiple years from seeing it again.

Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty said in 2021 that Xbox “will share more on Everwild when the team has got some cool stuff to show”.

While Rare’s last game, Sea of Thieves, got off to a rocky start before finding calmer water, we wonder if Everwild can share the same fate, or if we’ll ever see it again.

Splinter Cell remake – Ubisoft

Last release: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013)

Believe it or not, Ubisoft did actually announce this game. Following a teaser in 2021, nothing has been heard about the remake of Sam Fisher’s first adventure.

Splinter Cell fans have been starving for a decade now, and it seems like that hunger will continue.

It’s not like Ubisoft hasn’t been busy. In fact, it is one of the most prolific publishers around, with Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six, Skull and Bones, Just Dance and Star Wars Outlaws all chugging along, but the Echelon agents have been left in the dust.

You’d think that after making Echelon one of the main factions in XDefiant, Ubisoft would be keen to remind people where those characters actually came from, but we don’t expect to see it this weekend.

Perhaps after the debut (and subsequent shunning) of the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake, Ubisoft is being a bit more careful.

Halo – 343

Last release : Halo Infinite (2021)

The Halo franchise finds itself in a strange position. At the start of the generation, it felt like Microsoft might be going all-in once again on the tales of Master Chief. It went so far as to slap his green helmet on the box of the Series X, a move that would leave Microsoft with egg on its face after Halo Infinite was delayed until a year after the console was on store shelves.

But when Infinite did eventually release, there were green shoots for the once all-consuming shooter franchise. The multiplayer, which was released for free in a shrewd move by Microsoft, was met with a warm reception from players, leading to a resurgence in popularity for the franchise in a space that had long left it behind.

The campaign, which was a departure from previous titles wherein it threaded linear missions together with a large open-world, was similarly well received. But then, as has befallen so many multiplayer games since the explosion of live service, things started to go wrong.

Shooter fans expect developers to react at a breakneck pace to the slightest inconvenience, and at the same time be able to provide new maps, weapons, cosmetics, and more. It’s an expectation of content that can be handled by a game like Fortnite or Call of Duty, but Halo, like so many others, fell short.

Community sentiment turned on the game and some after some broken promises like the abandoning of couch co-op for single-player, Halo Infinite is now a game that limps on, rather than confidently strides. The Halo franchise, once a load-bearing release in any calendar, arguably now has just as many disappointing main series titles as it does seminal ones.

While today has brought rumours that Microsoft is in the early stages of another remaster of the original Halo, and is even considering bringing it to PlayStation, there’s no sign of a new entry in the series any time soon.

While Microsoft will obviously return to Halo one day – after all, it has a TV show to promote – Master Chief is once again in limbo. Other Gears are turning at Microsoft, meaning that there may simply not be room for Halo in the current lineup, but we feel there’s just enough goodwill that one day, that score will swell, and players will believe.