E3 may be dead, but the Summer Game Fest lives on – what to expect and how to tune in

We’ll never forget you, E3. Your spirit will continue to live on in all the gaming events you have inspired since your untimely death. The biggest of which is Summer Game Fest, Geoff Keighley’s lovechild kicking off this weekend, which got its first taste of fame when FromSoftware threw them a bone in the form of Elden Ring’s first gameplay trailer in 2021.

But the Summer Game Fest is so much more than the event with an Elden Ring trailer. It’s a massive collective of the industry’s big hitters — broken down into a whole bunch of smaller events hosted by the likes of Keighley, Xbox and… GamesRadar? The main event usually involves Keighley’s labrador-like face on the big stage before the spotlight is shone on other events like Day of the Devs, the Future Games Show and Xbox’s own Showcase (followed by a Black Ops VI direct).

And Hollow Knight: Silksong will be at none of them.*

E3 without the E3

In the past, you were likely to find the biggest announcements of the event wherever Geoff Keighley was standing. This year, Xbox is looking to shake up the hierarchy and steal the show. Still, as the opener for the entire weekend, Keighley’s event will surely have some surprises lined up. It’ll be streamed in all the usual places — on the official The Game Awards YouTube and Twitch channels — but the stream we’ve embedded above will work just fine on the night.

As for what we can expect from Geoff Keighley on the night, he hinted through a recent Q&A on Twitch that the night’s focus would be on already-existing games rather than brand-new announcements. Keighley also implied that Hollow Knight: Silksong wouldn’t be making an appearance.

“I think it’s going to be, generally, a little bit quieter this summer in terms of crazy new announcements and shocking surprises and things like that,” he said, before noting, “there will definitely be new announcements.”

According to DigitalTrends, some of the bigger announcements include a new trailer for Dragon Ball: Sparkling! Zero, a look at the Among Us series, Palworld updates (PS5 please!) and reveals from Remedy Entertainment and Two Star Games. In a tweet, Summer Games Fest pointed out that “2K plans to reveal the next iteration in one of 2K’s biggest and most beloved franchises,” which, according to Xputer, is said to be Borderlands 4.

The Summer Game Fest is scheduled to kick off on 7 June at 11 PM SAST.

Back to the Future Games Show

If indie titles and lesser-known developers are more your speed, then GamesRadar’s Future Games Show is where you should direct your eyes on Saturday, 8 June. It’s pulled in some big names to bring those new games to life, with Roger Clark (Arthur Morgan, Red Dead Redemption) and Britt Baron (Tifa, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth) heading things up.

GamesRadar is touting this month’s show as “our biggest digital games event of the year,” trumping the publication’s event it held in March — which saw new trailers and updates for “over 50 exciting games across PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch and PC,” including trailers for Sand Land and Dragon’s Dogma 2.

The Future Games Show is scheduled to kick off on 8 June at 9 PM SAST.

Think inside the Xbox Showcase

Step aside, Keighley. The Xbox Showcase has reportedly stepped up to the plate with a two-hour-long show (not including the Black Ops 6 showcase directly afterwards), with around 30 or so games on display — some of which aren’t even on anyone’s radar. That’s coming from well-known reporter and leaker Jeff Grubb (via ResetEra).

“I’m not gonna spoil anything but the numbers I’m hearing are two hours and about thirty games, and at least a handful of those games are games we haven’t heard of before,” he said. “I think there will be around five games that we haven’t heard about before and that’s from across all their verticals.”

With a new Call of Duty firmly out of the way, it paves the way for titles from Bethesda and Activision Blizzard to fill up the two-hour-long show. One of those, according to Grubb could be another entry in the Dragon Age series, which has long been rumoured to be named Dreadwolf (though his later comments hinted that Dreadwolf may not be the title revealed).

Then there were those rumours of a new Doom game, The Dark Ages, that’ll breach all consoles, PS5 included.

The Xbox Showcase is scheduled to kick off on 9 June at 7 PM SAST.