Poll: How Would You Rate Summer Game Fest and Its Surrounding Shows as a Whole?

Xbox saved it

Xbox killed it, and the rest sucked tbh.

So Nintendo don't count?

Didn’t see Ubisoft.

Sony/SGF had a few interesting things.

But Xbox had overall the best show, even if some were further away.

I think the gaming industry is in a tough spot at the moment. Xbox did have a couple of different looking games. But all shows seem to have same looking games how many soulslike games did we see last week. There were at least 3 5v5 team PVP shooters. We dont seem to get to much new and exciting as I have said many times before this gen seems to be Remakes, Sequels and Souls likes.

Astrobot > all games shown 🤖

Xbox's show was the only good one these last few weeks. There were a lot of games that grabbed my attention, but the shows themselves were mostly weak.

DOOM looks super fun

Those who think the only good thing to come out of the Summer Game Fest was Xbox's show clearly didn't watch the Day of the Dev presentation. There are some solid indies headed our way, like Petal Runner, Phoenix Springs, Screenbound, and Neva.

If it weren’t for Xbox’s showcase and Astro I’d have said it was pretty disappointing.

Xbox seems to be the only one going for the e3 spectacle of old. They had a great show in 2023 and this year's was an all timer. I'm starting to wonder if 3rd parties are going to view xbox as the showcase they prefer to show their games at.

Xbox is the clear winner, but I think viewers are justified in being skeptical of the quality of the eventual releases.

Sony's SoP was dire, Summer Fest was fine, MS showcase very overrated and Ubi's was my favourite.

I was heavily disappointed. The only decent showcase was Xbox. Everything else could have been a blog post. Also what’s with all these hero shooters that nobody even wants

Its funny because we are now all praising xbox.

But reality is they've bought that many true third gen developers they really couldn't fail.

Not only that but its been 10 years xbox have been promising games, so it finally happened but it took 100 billion to get to a decent showcase.

sony needs way more shooter rpgs

The shows' collective output of games were equal to many shows of the past and surpassed quite a few if not most years.

To think that all it took for Xbox was a measly 70-100 billion dollars. It is a shock no one has done it before.

They have lost the console war, but in the process they've effectively shifted battlefields and have become a massive publisher. Poor Microsoft. They will have to lose against themselves only now.

And losing to oneself brings me to the LEAST interesting "show" namely Pony Slaytation. They should've sent an email instead of what they phoned in. Sure, PlayStation Bot is real, but no true adult with respect for themselves play Kidd's games let's be real. And it just so happens I'm scheduled for true adulthood come this autumn.

If this year's showing is indicative of anything it'll be that Sony is done with games and Microsoft has just graduated into publisher.

Of course, Nintendo has been both for quite some time, so maybe the stories of tomorrow will be who wins the publishing wars.

The gaming community as a whole is exceedingly fickle. Personally, I’ve become less interested in the optics and politics of these presentations and more interested in all the games I’m drowning in. Still, voted ‘Good’ in the poll.

@__jamiie Nintendo wasn’t present at SGF

@Savage_Joe But there will still be a Nintendo Direct to judge later this month. And considering a lot of games for PlayStation and Xbox are announced for Switch first it's worth paying attention to.

@__jamiie but how can they add the Nintendo direct into the conversation when it’s not been held?

Don't know why people praising xbox so much all they did was pay developers more to show stuff

This year's showings weren't very good — save for Xbox. But people might be forgetting how often E3s of yore were a bore. Ubisoft's, in particular, felt like a typical conference they could've had at any E3 in the last decade.

I would still say I preferred E3 just because of the collective structure. While Nintendo's mostly been doing their own thing, I felt like the pressure of E3 still discouraged then from doing such a detached showing as this year. So that's what I miss, that connective tissue. Aside from that, it's mostly the same honestly.

This goes to show that before bringing anything down, it's good to make sure you have something better ready to replace it.
While I agree the ESA made very bad business decisions the last years of E3, nothing from any Summer Game Fest came even close to the best E3 years...

Plus, I'm sick of all the people literally bootlicking Geoff Keighly.

The Xbox show felt like an E3 presser to me and was excellent though it totally had to be considering they bought half the industry!

Xbox wiped the floor with the rest of the shows.
I always expect these events to be massive disappointment, but the Xbox show, is the only one, in MANY years, that was actually exciting.

@MikeOrator even though more than half the games shown are coming to PlayStation?

The biggest issue is the lack of journalists to hold things to account. Publishers get to showcase in a safe, micromanaged format without having to answer hard questions. Starfield looked like GOTY material in Xbox's showcase last year, we all know how that turned out.

A massive waste of time as usual I miss E3

A very poor showing from Sony, paled in comparison to the Xbox showcase

@Mikey856 ....those really were the days ! Used to love buying the Gamesmaster E3 editions. In some ways, the Internet has ruined some traditions, like buying magazines

@B_Lindz thanks for commenting this I didn't see it n play indies more than owt else 😂il check it out 😎

@AgentMantis Games journalism has always been an ally to and extension of gaming marketing. There's never been an gaming conference where journalists were there to hold companies accountable.

Summer game feast, No
Sony thing, bad to ok, Astro saved it.
Nintendo, no show.
Xbox just nailed it, as simple as that and I’ve never been happier to have game pass.

Pretty poor tbh, PlayStation SoP wasn't the best apart from revealing the game I want the most this year in Astro Bot, Summer Game Fest wasnt great either as it was primarily indies and not many reveals for games I'm interested in.

Ubisoft was OK for what was shown, Star Wars and Assassins Creed looked pretty good. Finally I'm not interested in Xbox games so most games shown in their showcase didn't wow me, plus the 6/7 live service games shown and quite a few cinematic trailers.

So yeah not the best "E3" period for me but here's hoping Nintendo save the day next week with a Beyond Good and Evil Remaster and Final Fantasy 9 Remake reveals.

A few new AAA games unveiled that I am interested in, some updated trailers for dlc/games that I already have in my schedule, and a host of great indie/small-scale games that will probably be single-weekend charmers.

The rest of my gaming year has pretty much been filled up by things that look fun, and I can't reasonably ask for more than that!

@Shepherd_Tallon There’s so much to unpack in this conversation but for the sake of brevity, I agree and I much prefer the approach of not showing something too far out. There have been some fantastic games released this year and there are fantastic games headed our way and, considering they have been uncharacteristically transparent with the fact they have nothing in the near future, Sony really pulled a rabbit out of the hat with Astro Bot 😄

Xbox ended up saving the Gaming SummerFest, Nintendo, PlayStation were pretty much dead in the water.

Xbox was the only one worth watching (and Astrobot)

Although Microsoft showed why they'll be the best publisher rather than a reason to buy an Xbox

Gears E Day on the PS5 Pro is going to look Godly

@Shepherd_Tallon Man, tell me about it. At some point I realized that I was writing a novel in response to you but ended up scrapping it for what I ended up with (I’m at work too) 😂 Yeah, I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s feelings on the matter but I personally really can’t align myself with this cloud of general disillusionment currently hanging over the gaming community. Too many amazing games!

@ShogunRok I would love to see the crosstabs for your polls. I'm curious to know how the responents in one poll voted other especially when y'all do the PS Plus drop polls.

I went with okay overall, State of Play probably had the most that interested me. Xbox was okay but nothing there wowed me, nothing to do with console wars it just featured a lot of genres / or series that don't appeal to me.

One thing that was interesting was all the multi platform that Xbox did show makes you wonder if they offered more reasonable package deals for the trailers as the pricing revealled before hand for the main SGF show did seem ridiculous.

The xbox one was great, the others were very meh. The astro and horizon reveals were good for playstation. And I only watched Ubisoft for more info on AC and Star wars. They might as well have done 2 individual streams and not have had a fill showcase

My opinion:
Wholesome Direct 2024 = 7 / 10
I was pretty content with the games announced

Summer Games Fest = 0 / 10
It was rubbish and will be always rubbish

It was ok but the best part of event season hasn't happened yet. I have no doubts that the Nintendo Direct will be the best showcase of the bunch.

I think it met my expectations, but I expected a middle of the road show in terms of announcements.

Compared to the glory days of E3 it fell far short of that, but again, I don't think it was reasonable to expect that level of hype (and companies prioritizing it) for a far less prestigious venue for announcements.

Microsoft's showcase was probably equal to a classic 1st party E3 show, but Sony and 3rd parties weren't. And the market leader (Nintendo) was totally absent, which also made it basically impossible to create the unifying industry hype machine that E3 once was.

Let's be honest it was pretty bad until Xbox dragged it kicking and screaming into good territory with by far the best show.

My rankings are

Xbox: A+ - so many great looking games and well presented
Playstation: C - not much to offer but Astro Bot looks incredible
Ubisoft: D - no surprises but Star Wars is looking great
Geoffs D, would have been worse but Power Rangers looks fun
Nintendo TBD but given they're on the road to Switch 2 I don't expect any big surprises

Overall Summer Games Fest isn't even remotely close to E3 at its peak

It wasn't bad I saw enough games I want to play although I already knew about most of them so I suppose I didn't actually need to tune in at all.

Still though these are the games I'm interested in.

• Phantom Blade Zero
• Doom
• Astro Bot
• Stalker
• Metal Gear
  And I'm cautiously optimistic that these two will also turn out to be good as well but I have less faith in them than the others.
• Killer Bean
• Silent Hill

I didn't watch the Ubisoft show, did they show any unannounced games?

@__jamiie had Nintendo made their presentation within the days of the SGF, the sure no problem. But Nintendo loves to be Nintendo and always swim against the current

@PsBoxSwitchOwner So why not hold off until that's happened?

@__jamiie “So why not hold off until that's happened?”
By the time Nintendo finally shows its Direct, everyone would’ve forgotten or moved on from the SGF week.

@Savage_Joe The Summer Games Fest is it's own thing.

It has nothing to do with the Xbox, Ubisoft or PlayStation events. Completely separate. Nintendo is making its own show too in a few days. Why not wait? I'm fairly sure there will be PlayStation and Xbox announcements too.

The Nintendo Direct could still save the day but overall, the presentations were a ton of absolutely nothing.

@__jamiie “in a few days” could mean next week or two weeks later. The relevancy of the other conferences would be gone by then. News fade out quickly, unfortunately. Xbox, PlayStation and Ubisoft are what’s relevant now, and Nintendo missed the train.

@Kanji-Tatsumi
Astrobot > Killer Bean >> all games shown 🤖 🫘

Jesus there is no pleasing gamers these days I loved it so many games I thought looked great and looking forward yet it's the same every year comments filled with trash and gamings dead I swear these people don't even enjoy playing games anymore and want the industry to fail they take pleasure when games fail

@LazyLombax think that says more about you then if there was no games there that you liked the look of I think you should find a new hobby as gaming just isn't for you

@MrMagic unless you count the prince of Persia sands of time remake

@Toot1st Thanks I'll definitely check that trailer out because I liked the original. 👍

Expedition 33/10.

Load up Push Square, read the comments, "Xbox saved SGF!"

I don't know how I ended up in the alternate timeline where the factions have all surrendered and the unification has completed, but I like this alternate timeline.

@AfroMario same..hell..im still working on enjoying games from 2 years ago. It's always fun and interesting to see what is coming up though. I am also enjoying XDefiant so it was good to see that that one will prolly be around for awhile.

@BacklogBrad well for sure we know Bethesda and ABK won’t ever be able to show games at the Sony shows. So that alone keeps Sony shows smaller in comparison to Xbox. Throw in the fact Xbox has around double the studios and i think this is the way the shows are going to look going forward. Xbox will beat Sony 2-1 if not 3-1 in game announcements. Which seems small but over time younger kids will see Xbox Gamepass on all the big titles coming out. Something i am sure Sony isn’t thrilled with but they will still of course have Doom and COD.

@NEStalgia i feel the same way, I’ve even seen a few people go out and buy a Xbox after the showcase. Remember i said Xbox sales were up 221% on Amazon the day after COD got announced for GP. Can’t say if it was related to that announcement or just coincidental. Maybe we can live in a world when all gamers enjoy the healthy competition between console and PC makers and play the games they like where they want and how they want…. Who am i kidding everyone will be fighting again soon enough.

On a side note.. many journalists and close fan’s were told by Xbox workers that there was more games that could have shown and just didn’t make the show for time. But then said be at game con in august. So the rumors are Xbox might have 3-5 more titles to show there. If so they are just crushing it. Plus they are signing 3-4 second party games.

@NEStalgia Load up Push Square, read the comments, "Xbox saved SGF!"

Is it safe for me to assume this wasn’t on your bingo card? HAHA

looking at these comments i think people keep forgetting e3 is dead , and announcements can come any time of the year and not just now. not to mention they are upset that games that don't even exist yet or in general weren't there is also silly.

Aside from the Xbox showcase it was absolute garbage and the majority of the main event felt completely unnecessary. Just one big cash grab of advertising money. The large majority of the "accompanying shows" were not affiliated to it and in all reality shouldn't be coupled together in terms of polling.

As far as Sony's state of play, I genuinely question their level of competency even as a business at this point. They seem hell bent on destroying every bit of goodwill they have merely because the hardware sold well. What's so bizarre is that all of this souring sentiment is completely avoidable and there is really no good reason for it other than greed and a genuine lack of effort and understanding of PR.

@Llamada Nintendo haven’t had their show yet though.

@MikeOrator not sure why because they’re all gonna be on PlayStation

I am still waiting for Nintendo.
But, i will be honest. All i watched was Sony's state of play.
Curious for the Nintendo direct.

Didn't much care for the rest.

Sure wasn't e3 level that's for sure. Keen to see what Nintendo have and the lrg3 should be good. Would have been good if Capcom/Square/Sega did presentations too.

@__jamiie It counts when it comes to Horizon Zero Dawn.

I can’t believe that was it for Sony. They didn’t even try.

@HonestHick Lol even I never saw this one coming 😂

After buying so many studios or was expected they'd have so much, and I think most of us watching in 2020 predicted Sony would be front loaded and Xbox back loaded this generation. But it's pretty intense watching them not just have the goods, but present it in a hype inducing way that Even this site is getting the old e3 vibes from it. A heck of a pivot. Ironically the games coming to ps really DO have a console war cease fire effect boosting their image.

There was interesting games and announcement but overall all of the shows was okay.

And SoP doesn't showed a lot of big games is a blessing in disguise for Astro Bot because it's the number 1 most wanted game above Doom, SH 2 remake, Gears of War, etc etc. I don't know if that was intentional from Sony but Sony got a golden egg with Astro Bot and i hope they market it really well.

Geoffiroth has lost the plot. E3 was miles better.

Xbox's showcase was utterly astounding! Brilliant and exciting! Summer Games Fest and the State Of Play were utter boring waste of time garbage with nothing new or anything of interest to me. I haven't seen the other shows and Nintendos is next week.

The only thing Sony showed that was remotely exciting was Alien VR. Sure Astrobot but that's more of the same experience.

Geoff seemed pissed off that Microsoft and Nintendo especially didn't show any games at his crappy show, well that's how E3 worked, they all had their own individual shows and I loved it for that. Games Fest is just a 2 hour long advert for Geoff to make more millions from, and he isn't the worlds best presenter either.

Cannot believe we went from E3 to the Summer Games Fest bore.

Xbox has this year reminded me of the days when Sony had Tretton or House at the helm, and we had E3 still, those were the days, now it's shows seem just as dull as the suites all Sony execs wear. Jim Ryan sounded as exciting as wet fart in a lift which is fine if you have the games to show off, and at present they do not.

@NEStalgia Xbox can have a show this large every year with that many studios so this is a ball that is going to continue to roll down hill now after all the years of rolling it uphill. Plus now with them signing deals for 2nd party games that is an impressive lineup. This was the goal set for GP to grow and be huge. It needed a AAA game every 3 months, i think they are still working on that goal but with this showcase you are starting to see how it would be possible. Sony will have their hands full trying to keep up game wise as it seems like they are confused their studios with the back and forth on live service games. Game development is long enough these days so when you throw the back and forth thing and cancelled projects that put’s a lot of games even further out. Sony should have a nice show for next year. But it will still feel smaller in scope as they can’t advertise any of these studios MS owns. Sure they get the games but not the hype and advertising rights to them. Sounds like no big deal to us hardcore guys, but the casuals flock to the marketing rights. Just look at COD for an example. I give it 2 more years and GP is going to explode to become the true exclusive left standing between the two makers.

I am thinking next years Bingo card from you might have to take a swing or two at something this unexpected. HAHA

This is the sea change that is usually expected every console generation or two. MS have shown that they're gearing up to be competitive following the release of their next console, which will probably be around November, 2027 or 2028.

They've sown the seeds and they're preparing for a tentative victory in the tenth generation. I personally think it's coming. These showcases are beginning to demonstrate the cost of Sony's complacency and neglect for their own audience.

@HonestHick remember when people mocked me here, called me an Xbox fanboy, even blocked me for saying how destructive Jim's decision making was and that we wouldn't see it until late ps5 early ps6 and it would be too late to avoid the damage? Jims direction set their games back years confused their focus, chased unicorns, and it lines up right to when Ms is leveraging what they started building in 2016. Yes they had the money and Sony didn't. But Sony had the hearts and minds on lock until Jim went unicorn hunting.

@NEStalgia now thats a Bingo!!! HAHA

@Bez87 My god, every time I see someone talk about Xbox acquisitions the value gets higher, one more year and we will be at 1 trillion dollars, 68.7B for ABK, 7B for Bethesda. You can try to argue that 5 AA studios with financial problems and 2 studios that were already working exclusively for Xbox and owned no IP (Forza and State of Decay were Microsoft properties before the acquisition) completed the 100B but it's hard to get there.

@Hi569 Of the 30 games that showed, 17 were First party, unless you want to argue that the acquisition invalidates this and the question is: what is the limit for this argument? ABK? Publishers? Or Avowed, South of Midnight also are "paid".

I have mixed feeling about this years 'Summerfest' tbh. Playstation was lacking any big hitters, especially 1st party wise but I like that when they show 'in-engine CG' they tell you etc. Geoff's show got rid of the celebrities and gave the stage to actual Devs which was good but again no Games that really 'WOWed'. Xbox showed some cool looking games but not much was actual gameplay and no release dates for most. Saying all this though E3 had years like this and I don't think it will ever change. Some years are awesome and some are meh....