Gaming enthusiasts rejoice! Summer Game Fest is returning in 2021 with a kickoff live stream event hosted by Geoff Keighley on Thursday, June 10th at 2 PM EST. More than 25 gaming publishers are supporting the event this year, with the likes of Sony, Microsoft, and Epic Games, all sharing upcoming news and announcements with fans across the internet.
You can find the full list of partners below, and according to the festival’s official website, after the kickoff on June 10, there will be a Ubisoft Forward on June 12, a Steam Next Fest on June 16, and an EA Play Live on July 22. Those are the only events on the calendar at the time of this being written. Summer Game Fest 2021 live streams are available to watch on most major video sites like YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and more.
The game announcement live stream extravaganza hosted by Game Awards creator and game journalist Geoff Keighley began in 2020 as a pseudo-all-digital replacement to the traditional Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which had been canceled due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Last year, as many game publishers big and small announced their own digital showcases, Summer Game Fest came along to act as a sort of umbrella, highlighting each of these individual gaming events over the summer months. There were also a number of live streams hosted by Geoff Keighley that revealed brand new games in addition to the streams from big publishers like Microsoft and EA.
Spreading game announcements and live streams over a 4-month timespan (May-August) made it so many of these gaming events had their moment in the spotlight. However, Summer Game Fest 2020 received some criticism from viewers that suggested there was a lack of focus and that stretching the news out over four months dimmed the excitement that was once felt with the weeklong news blast of E3.
However, it seems like the event organizers have taken some of these criticisms to heart and have altered the event’s format this year. Rather than having a number of individual announcements over several months, the kickoff live stream on June 10th is estimated to be around 2 hours long and features at least 12 world premieres according to a Q&A thread on Geoff Keighley’s Twitter account.
It’s also worth noting that, unlike last year, the Entertainment Software Association announced that E3 will be returning in a digital capacity from June 12-15. A number of game publishers have stated that they will be involved in E3 in some fashion this year. Seeing as many of these publishers have their own digital events scheduled, it will be interesting to see what kind of announcements are made during E3, and which ones are withheld for these publisher-specific events.
Overall, Summer Game Fest 2020 was a success and should be cause for excitement in the gaming space this year. Some of the most notable announcements from last year’s show include the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, the official Unreal Engine 5 technical showcase, as well as the myriad of announcements out of the Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Devolver Digital showcases and beyond.
Perhaps we will get the reveal of the new highly anticipated Battlefield title, or maybe we will finally get to see official gameplay of From Software’s Elden Ring? Or better yet, we get to be surprised by things we didn’t know existed or didn’t know we wanted. What are you looking forward to most during the 2021 festivities? Keep an eye out here over the coming months for tons of coverage on all the exciting news to come out of Summer Game Fest 2021.
