Brace yourselves, summer is coming! Last year professional gaming showman and host of The Game Awards Geoff Keighley launched Summer Games Fest to fill the vacuum left by E3 and the pandemic. It’s returning this year, beginning with the Kick Off Live show on Thursday, June 10. It will stream freely via all the major platforms, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
The Kick Off Live show, which begins at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern, will feature “a spectacular live world premiere showcase,” as well as a performance by Weezer, and a Day of the Devs indie showcase. The digital festival will celebrate gaming with over 30 publishers, developers, and partners, including Sega, Riot Games, Ubisoft, EA, Epic Games, Gearbox, Blizzard, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Sony, and Microsoft.
Other scheduled events include Ubisoft Forward on June 12, the Steam Next Fest on June 16 (including hundreds of demos), and the EA Play Live showcase on July 22.
This year E3 is returning as an all-digital event, and will take place right around the same time, June 12 – 15. It’ll be interesting to see how the two streaming gaming shows compete or synergize with one another. The Ubisoft Forward event, for example, will be streamed to both E3 and the Summer Games Fest. Keighley is specifically framing the festival as more spread out over several months (though not as much as last year) rather than a tightly focused few days.
The Summer Games Fest will begin on June 10, and E3 2021 on June 12.
