Summer Game Fest is coming up fast, and Geoff Keighley’s yearly summer splash has snagged more than 30 partners this year. It may not rival the size of E3s of olde, but it’s still a huge chunk of the “E3” schedule, the summer showcase season now without a name since I refuse to call it G3.
We won’t know all the details until it’s live, but Keighley has, as ever, done plenty to set the stage. In a recent Twitter Spaces chat, Keighley said to expect about a two hour show with multiple gameplay demonstrations. There isn’t time for long segments of gameplay during The Game Awards in December, but Keighley said that we should expect some of that in proper summer showcase fashion.
The one big caveat came from a fan question about big surprises. Keighley cautioned that “going into this year’s show there was obviously an initial trepidation because last year was so big with Elden Ring and it’s like ‘how do you top that?’ and the answer is you really don’t.” Keighley instead seems focused on smaller surprises and games that “may not even be on people’s radar.”
Without a long-awaited and much-memed surprise like Elden Ring up his sleeve this year, what might we be seeing? For the big publishers like EA and 2K, the answer is, well, any number of things. We can make some educated guesses, though.
Here’s what we think is headed our way on June 9:
Which publishers and partners are going to Summer Game Fest?
2K, Activision, Atlus, Bandai Namco, Bloober Team, Capcom, Coffee Stain, Deep Silver, Devolver, Digital Extremes, Dotemu, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Focus Entertainment, Frost Giant, Humble Games, Level Infinite, Mediatonic, miHoYo, Netflix, PlayStation, Raw Fury, Samsung, Sega, Square Enix, Skybound Games, Steam, Studio MDHR, Tribeca Festival, Warner Bros. Games, and Xbox.
Welcome to #SummerGameFest month!Here’s our new promo video featuring the premiere of the new song “Will of the People” by @MUSEStay tuned for more news and updates as we get ready for the live show on Thursday, June 9! pic.twitter.com/t170vqbxoCJune 1, 2022
Layers of Fear 2 or Silent Hill
Last seen: October 2021
Layers of Fear developer Bloober Team is on the SGF list of partners and there are a couple things we might see from the horror studio. There was a pretty unmistakable teaser for a sequel to the first-person horror game that first put Bloober on the map. There have also been a lot of rumors about the studio taking on a Silent Hill 2 remake. Maybe we’ll finally get some answers.
Last seen: In our dreams
Yeah, yeah, call it a long shot if you want, but hear me out. Atlus has brought Persona 4 Golden and musou spinoff Persona 5 Strikers to PC, so the expectation for Persona 5 is high. Last summer, Atlus promised seven Persona series announcements between then and this September for the series’ 25th anniversary. Over on the anniversary site, Atlus lists June 2022 as the next time frame for an announcement. We sure seem to be getting Persona something at Summer Game Fest, whether or not it’s another PC port.
Final Fantasy 16
Last seen: September 2020
With Final Fantasy: Origin out and Chaos tamped down, it’s time to turn our gazes back to the next game of the series. FF16 made a quick and dark debut in 2020 and has been pretty quiet since. At the end of last year, series producer Yoshida told fans to expect news in spring 2022. Well, here we are and here is Square Enix’s name on the SGF roster. Square Enix could show off FF16 earlier at the State of Play event instead or, hey, do a little at both.
Zenless Zone Zero
Last seen: May 2022
Genshin Impact developer miHoYo only recently announced its next game Zenless Zone Zero, an action RPG with some kind of “roguelike gameplay mechanism”. Maybe miHoYo is bringing a teaser for the next major Genshin update, or maybe it’ll be giving an expanded look at Zenless gameplay with an announcement for the first beta.
Nightingale
Last seen: December 2021
We’ve had our eye on this fantasy Victorian crafting survival game and Inflexion Games has now confirmed that it will be bringing a new look at gameplay to Summer Game Fest. With its plans to enter early access later this year, we may be able to expect this to be one of the lengthier demonstrations Keighley referenced.
Frost Giant’s new RTS
Last seen: Never
One game that Keighley has teased this week is a reveal of the first project from Frost Giant Studios, made up of some former Blizzard developers and co. Frost Giant’s stated goal is developing “an epic real-time strategy game that will appeal to players around the world.”
What might everyone else bring?
- 2K: BioShock 4, Mafia prequel, Midnight Suns
- Activision: Call of Duty and Warzone, Overwatch 2, Diablo 4
- Bandai Namco: One Piece Odyssey, The Devil in Me, Elden Ring DLC?
- Capcom: Pragmata, Resident Evil Village DLC, Dragon’s Dogma 2??
- Electronic Arts: F1 22, Dead Space reboot, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
- Epic Games: Fortnite and more Unreal Engine demos
- Playstation: Returnal PC
- Sega: Sonic Frontiers, Yakuza?
- Warner Bros: MultiVersus and Hogwarts Legacy