Topic: Summer Games Fest / E3 Season 2024

Thought with June coming up and what I like to call E3 season (rest in peace E3 you will be missed) I thought I would make a place to discuss the announcements, presentations, and everything else in one place. Here is to my knowledge all of the official announcements I've found so far (All times in ET)

MAY 30TH
MARVELOUS! Game Showcase - 6:00 PM
State Of Play - 6:00 PM

JUNE 4TH
OTK Games Expo - 3:00 PM

JUNE 6TH
Access-Ability Summer Showcase - 11:00 AM
Guerrilla Collective - 1:00 PM

JUNE 7TH
IGN Live - 7th - 9th
Access-Ability Summer Showcase - 11:00 AM
Summer Game Fest - 5:00 PM
Day Of The Devs: SGF Edition - Immediately After SGF
Devolver Direct - 8:00 PM

JUNE 8TH
Future Of Play - 11:00 AM
Wholesome Direct - 12:00 PM
Latin American Games Showcase - 1:00 PM
Women-Led Games Showcase - 2:30 PM
Future Games Show Summer Showcase - 3:00 PM

JUNE 9TH
XBOX Games Showcase + A Special Showcase - 1:00 PM
PC Gaming Show - 4:00 PM

JUNE 10TH
Ubisoft Forward - 3:00 PM

TBD
LEVEL5 Vision 2024
Nintendo Direct
Upload VR Showcase

If there are any updates or announcements I have missed @ me in this thread and I'll add them. What are you most excited for and expecting to see this year!?

@Blooper987
Wholesome Direct is my choice for upcoming cute / cozy games like Harvest Moon style / Animal Crossing style on Switch and other consoles.

Ill definitely watch the direct because I love a good remake, and ill take a peek at the level 5 showcase to check if a certain franchise is getting localized in the west or not, and the Xbox showcase just to see whatever activision things they’re gonna throw onto gamepass

Monster Hunter Wilds is at the forefront of my mind as we know nothing about it as yet.

Everything else to-be announced this summer is backlog fodder.

Just...waiting for Fantasy Life i to arrive in October, honestly.

It's called a Special Showcase for Xbox because it will be the first showcase featuring studio closures, as they happen, live. Get excited!

Given that I use an Xbox exclusively since my family’s Switch transferred households, I’ll definitely be watching the Xbox showcase for fun. It’s so exciting to think what games will be shown there, and I just love how June is regarding gaming; it’s a month of fun and free time for games!

I don’t know if anything there will excite or interest me, but I am hoping the show is good or passable, especially since they closed Tango and three other game studios under their helm recently…I really don’t know why they did that though, it makes no sense honestly.

Regarding what I expect, I don’t really know actually. There have been reports and rumors of some games they have in-development and are yet to announce. A couple of those rumored projects seem appealing to me, but I still am going to take those with a grain of salt. A fairly reputable guy has this ongoing rumor of a new Banjo-Kazooie game being in-development and I would absolutely love for that to happen. However, given it is a rumor, I’m just going to wait and see if this rumor is true. If the project is actually real, I would not expect them to reveal it at the showcase, given a recent update the guy gave said the rumored entry was only in development for around 2-3 years, was only green-lit recently, and that it was already being reworked from its initial vision.

Updated this with all the new presentations announced. Tomorrow the excitement begins!!!

Came back from watching the Xbox showcase a few hours ago, and it was really good I’d say! Had plenty to be excited about. They showed off the Perfect Dark game with gameplay and it really looked appealing to me despite not playing a lot of the N64 original or that apparently not so great Xbox prequel.

The xbox showcase had a couple cute indies and the new Life is Strange game I hope come to Switch or Switch 2 eventually. After 30 shooter games 😝

Looking forward to Tempopo from the PC show.

@FishyS The new Life is Strange is confirmed for Switch, though doesn't have a release date yet. I'm surprised NL has yet to report on it.

You remember that Nintendo direct that was filled with farming games to the point of near absurdity?

That's how I feel about 3-4 genres but across the entire Xbox showcase. I don't understand what audience will even remember the majority of the games as distinct enough from other games they could be playing on the same system around the same time nor how a lot of them would stand out based on the trailers shown. If I had an Xbox and nothing else and wanted to play games I saw on here, I still think I'd miss out on the majority of these games out of too many of them either being redundant or forgotten by me (and most people tbh).

Like most of them looked good on their own, but combined its mostly a giant blob of nothing.

@Dogorilla The new Life is Stange is confirmed for Switch....on the bottom of the game page on the website. Every tweet, every trailer....doesnt mention it. Heck most articles dont even acknowledge it.

@Haruki_NLI It probably means it'll appear in the June Direct and they accidentally announced the Switch version early via the site.

@kkslider5552000 Yeah it's like fast-food chain videogaming; it ticks the boxes, it fills the time without sticking out, and when you're done you're not going to remember the game, just that you weren't (too) bored.

I wouldn't say the presentations we've had this not-E3 season have been terrible per se, but one element they pretty much all share is struggling with keeping me (and I assume many others) engaged. I don't really care how good or bad a game is when you show it off; if you spend about 4-5 minutes on each and every single game shown in your conference, at some point my eyes are just going to start glazing over at everything that has a hyper-realistic visual style, regardless of whats actually being shown.

All these gripes are admittedly probably just a me thing, but I think the way companies like Sony, Microsoft, SGF, etc. have held their conferences this year really just goes to show how much Nintendo has perfected the Direct formula to a near sheen. I'm aware I'm heavily biased towards them, but man Nintendo really just gets how to showcase the games in its presentations:

• slideshow intro giving a brief look at the game before they go into detail, setting expectations accordingly
• heavy emphasis on actual gameplay over cinematics (and if cinematics are there, they usually only last about a minute or two) with narration providing info on the game as it plays
• closing slide detailing a game's release date/window before immediately moving on to the next one

They've been doing this kind of presentation since around about 2018 and I truly think its THE perfect way of doing a gaming presentation as it gets to the main point (the games) almost instantly without wasting the viewers time, allowing them to naturally get interested in what's being shown. It can definitely have its faults at times (I don't think anyone around here will be forgetting the great Farmpocalypse of September 2022) but goddamn man: if every presentation was like a Direct, I'd watch them in a heartbeat.

@Fizza The xbox showcase format drove me a little crazy. Sooooo many cut scenes and those 'world premier' announcements are trying to be cool but just feel grating. And the whole thing could have easily been at least 30 minutes shorter. I am also biased, but I still feel like Nintendo Directs are just really polished in comparison.

@FishyS I've been seeing so many people online claiming it to be 'XBOX'S MUCH-NEEDED WIN!!!' which like....I guess? It definitely had some cool titles like Doom: The Dark Ages, South of Midnight and Expedition 33 (and I'm particularly interested in checking out the new Perfect Dark myself), but I really couldn't care less about what was being shown by the halfway point as so many of the damn trailers just went on and on and on (with that Diablo IV expansion being particularly egregious of this: just 5+ minutes straight of cinematics without even showing a lick of actual gameplay whatsoever).

Really disliked the corporate speak from Spencer, Booty and Bond as well: seeing them prattle on about how much they 'care' for the devs of their games when they literally just shuttered some of their most talented studios less than two months ago REALLY left a bad taste in my mouth 🤢

@Grumblevolcano It's mentioned in the press release and the LiS Twitter page, so I don't think it's an accident. But the website does say 'also coming to Nintendo Switch with more details to follow', so you might be right that it will come up in the Direct.

@Fizza Although I did enjoy the Xbox presentation (also from bias) I think the biggest issue was the lack of release dates for the titles. I am hoping they get into Perfect Dark soon since some of the games in the presentation got deep dives after the showcase, but I wished that was given a release date. Microsoft’s main issue is revealing games far before they are finished and not commenting on they until years later, and I’m sure a lot of people have forgotten about some games like Everwild. I am happy they did give some updates on their first-parties, but again, they still didn’t give any of them release dates. I think one of the games was State of Decay 3. I think that one has been known for four years, and while it did show up, the only update was a cinematic trailer AGAIN with still no release date. A lot of people were the most disappointed from that.

The corporate speak is pretty annoying too. Even after enjoying the showcase, I still think it was nonsensical for them to close four of their studios under Bethesda, especially with Tango, since I think Microsoft has mentioned that they want the Xbox brand to have a presence in Japan and Tango was the first and so far only Microsoft-owned game studio based in Japan. Not to mention Hi-Fi Rush got great reception too and they wanted more games like it. I know it’s from a business point of view, but it still doesn’t make sense. I’m hoping they don’t go on another closing spree after this.

Although I am a former Nintendo user (since the Switch with my account transferred households), I still do like hearing about Nintendo Directs and the games in there, and I definitely agree that their presentations are done extremely well. The only presentation I can think of that wasn’t the best was the farming sim direct from a few years ago before I got into Xbox, but I still think they’ve had consistently good Directs. Hopefully I hear good things from the Nintendo Direct for this June. I’ll still be looking at some announcements for fun. I still love Nintendo, and a lot of their franchises are some of my favorite game series of all time.

I think this mainly comes from the fact that they have a seemingly regular schedule of new releases for the next year and a half, something they've not had for the entire previous decade. Which I'd have been pretty happy about (with how much I hate how AAA game companies have often given up on releasing new games half the time) if Microsoft hadn't just ruined the one justification why something good could come from their absurd buying spree.