Core of this year’s Summer Game Fest event will run from June 9-12
But announcements are likely to be spread over a matter of weeks
New details have been revealed about Summer Game Fest 2022, with the core of the event set to run from June 9-12.
As previously announced, it will kick off with “a live cross-industry showcase” on Thursday, June 9 at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm BST.
This promises to showcase “what’s next in gaming with huge new game announcements, world premieres, special guests, and much more”.
And it may be bookended by the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase, which starts on Sunday, June 12 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST, unless there’s a yet to be announced event to follow that day.
In a new interview, Summer Game Fest and Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley said this summer’s event will include a number of big streams from developers and publishers, although some of these look set to take place outside of the four core days.
“I think everything’s going to be really compact within a matter of weeks as the industry sort of represents itself to the wider world in June, with everyone sort of doing events,” Keighley told Epic Games Store.
“I know there’s a prevailing sentiment that everyone likes everything kind of packed in two days, or three days, or something like that. But that’s really hard to do because companies want to own specific days.
“So, I don’t know if we’re ever going to go back to that old model of everything being sort of compacted into just a couple of days.”
Keighley also said fewer companies are planning standalone events this year, with many instead expected to take part in first-party presentations. While Xbox has announced its product showcase, it’s currently unclear how Sony or Nintendo might fit into the schedule.
With many big publishers leaning more heavily into live service games these days, Keighley suggested there may be fewer blockbuster announcements than might have been the case in previous years.
“It’s just not how companies are set up today,” he said. “I mean, they’re more live service games. I look at the landscape now and the most exciting stuff for me is coming from a lot of these independent studios, or venture-backed companies, versus the big, traditional publishers.”
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Summer Game Fest live showcase dated for June
Keighley also said he doesn’t want the event to be overly focused on western developers, so the production team has been thinking of “interesting ways to talk about the global state of game development and who the people are making these games”.
This year’s show will also feature live events in Canada, the US and UK, where fans can gather to watch the event broadcast in IMAX cinemas.
Keighley previously said that “play at home content” will also be a feature of the show, presumably in the form of game demos.
