After Opening Night Live, Summer Games Fest comes to a close with only a couple of daily showcases left.
So Era, how did you perceive that event, did it live up to your expectations or did you wish for more?
Before stating my personal opinion, I'd like to thank Geoff Keighley for his incredible efforts. His passion for Gaming is clearly obvious and I'm sure he was working extremly hard behind the scene to ensure users get a great viewing experience plus overview of events as well as hosting/creating a lot of them at the same time and staying in contact with big and small publishers alike. He managed to keep the train rolling despite the current circumstances in the world! He really does deserve a ton of respect here.
However, I have a lot of stuff to say about Summer Games Fest: personally speaking, I wanted more.
The Event started great with Epic's incredible UE5 demo. I think we can all agree that this was a very special moment. To finally see what next gen was capable of and it really looked like a generational leap. After that, things slowed down quite a bit imo, the MS events lacked big announcements that demonstrate what the console can do and again, mostly small games. Many publishers also held their own streams in the E3 week and after, they also lacked big announcements and gameplay. There were a couple of events inbetween, but mostly for smaller Indie stuff. Don't get me wrong, Indie showcases are fine and many of them deserve much attention but I really wanted more impactful announcements. I often watched through these because I had hope for bigger announcements, but for me these were simply time wasters instead, so I'd really appreciate it if they would be labeled more as Indie shows in the future.
I was extremly excited about the premise of playing game demos at home. Geoff talked about the future of E3 or something like that, so I thought I could play atleast some of those E3 showfloor quality game demos on my own PC. "Great", I thought, "that really is the future, previously I had to travel to Los Angeles and wait an eternity to play the hottest games and now I will be able to just download them and play them from the comfort of my home". But that Steam Summer Game Festival was a huge disappointment, as quantity was valued way over quality there. A very small selection of stuff there was good, but like, 99% of these games did not interest me in the slightest and again, it was only smaller stuff. Nothing like these E3 showfloor demos I imagined.
You also had Geoff's streams with a couple of nice announcements / interviews such as the Crash event and funny Ms. Piggy and Alf sketches, those were really great and improved the overall quality a lot if you ask me.
Luckily, Sony really delivered with their PS5 showcase. They announced a ton of big and small games as well as the final PS5 console design. I must say, this was easily the best showcase of summer for me. Enough gameplay, some teasers, great pacing and superb announcements. After that, it only went downhill IMO.
The Xbox event following was okay I guess, but it really needed a lot more gameplay. The announcements were not bad, sadly there were GCI/in engine trailers most of the time, so we still have not seen any game running on the most powerful console at all. Halo was a disappointment, obviously.
Gamescom Opening Night Live was nicely done from a presentation perspective but that also lacked announcements. I have to ask though: what was the point of these awards for games that are not even out yet?
Lastly, we have to address the elephant in the room. Nintendo just did, like, nothing this summer which is incredibly disappointing for me as a huge Nintendo fan. No E3 direct. Just those partner directs and one mini with small announcements. But that is of course not Geoffs fault or anything, it's just how Nintendo operates now.
So in the end, I think SGF was a nice attempt, but the previous E3 years were much better for me. I like having my news week. The concept of having news spread out that much sounds nice at first because it allows for longer goodness in theory, but it ended in exhausting drip feed IMO. Maybe we could have both next year?
We should also acknowledge the current pandemic situation, so a lot of these lackluster announcements could be due to that. It's great that Sony, Microsoft and a ton of smaller publishers still gave us information about games, despite the current times, so that also deserves respect.
What do you think about the Summer Games Festival? I checked the option for allowing users to change their vote, so in the event of daily showcases delivering big stuff (which I doubt), you can still change your vote!
So Era, how did you perceive that event, did it live up to your expectations or did you wish for more?
Before stating my personal opinion, I'd like to thank Geoff Keighley for his incredible efforts. His passion for Gaming is clearly obvious and I'm sure he was working extremly hard behind the scene to ensure users get a great viewing experience plus overview of events as well as hosting/creating a lot of them at the same time and staying in contact with big and small publishers alike. He managed to keep the train rolling despite the current circumstances in the world! He really does deserve a ton of respect here.
However, I have a lot of stuff to say about Summer Games Fest: personally speaking, I wanted more.
The Event started great with Epic's incredible UE5 demo. I think we can all agree that this was a very special moment. To finally see what next gen was capable of and it really looked like a generational leap. After that, things slowed down quite a bit imo, the MS events lacked big announcements that demonstrate what the console can do and again, mostly small games. Many publishers also held their own streams in the E3 week and after, they also lacked big announcements and gameplay. There were a couple of events inbetween, but mostly for smaller Indie stuff. Don't get me wrong, Indie showcases are fine and many of them deserve much attention but I really wanted more impactful announcements. I often watched through these because I had hope for bigger announcements, but for me these were simply time wasters instead, so I'd really appreciate it if they would be labeled more as Indie shows in the future.
I was extremly excited about the premise of playing game demos at home. Geoff talked about the future of E3 or something like that, so I thought I could play atleast some of those E3 showfloor quality game demos on my own PC. "Great", I thought, "that really is the future, previously I had to travel to Los Angeles and wait an eternity to play the hottest games and now I will be able to just download them and play them from the comfort of my home". But that Steam Summer Game Festival was a huge disappointment, as quantity was valued way over quality there. A very small selection of stuff there was good, but like, 99% of these games did not interest me in the slightest and again, it was only smaller stuff. Nothing like these E3 showfloor demos I imagined.
You also had Geoff's streams with a couple of nice announcements / interviews such as the Crash event and funny Ms. Piggy and Alf sketches, those were really great and improved the overall quality a lot if you ask me.
Luckily, Sony really delivered with their PS5 showcase. They announced a ton of big and small games as well as the final PS5 console design. I must say, this was easily the best showcase of summer for me. Enough gameplay, some teasers, great pacing and superb announcements. After that, it only went downhill IMO.
The Xbox event following was okay I guess, but it really needed a lot more gameplay. The announcements were not bad, sadly there were GCI/in engine trailers most of the time, so we still have not seen any game running on the most powerful console at all. Halo was a disappointment, obviously.
Gamescom Opening Night Live was nicely done from a presentation perspective but that also lacked announcements. I have to ask though: what was the point of these awards for games that are not even out yet?
Lastly, we have to address the elephant in the room. Nintendo just did, like, nothing this summer which is incredibly disappointing for me as a huge Nintendo fan. No E3 direct. Just those partner directs and one mini with small announcements. But that is of course not Geoffs fault or anything, it's just how Nintendo operates now.
So in the end, I think SGF was a nice attempt, but the previous E3 years were much better for me. I like having my news week. The concept of having news spread out that much sounds nice at first because it allows for longer goodness in theory, but it ended in exhausting drip feed IMO. Maybe we could have both next year?
We should also acknowledge the current pandemic situation, so a lot of these lackluster announcements could be due to that. It's great that Sony, Microsoft and a ton of smaller publishers still gave us information about games, despite the current times, so that also deserves respect.
What do you think about the Summer Games Festival? I checked the option for allowing users to change their vote, so in the event of daily showcases delivering big stuff (which I doubt), you can still change your vote!
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