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VIDEO // The Summer Game Fest 2022 kicked off with a bang on Thursday, June 9. Crono draws up a first assessment: a lot of games shown with a few nuggets that stand out, but drowned in a video game bulimia.
A week after the official start of Summer Game Fest 2022, on Thursday June 9, it is the word “density” that will be remembered from the substitute for E3, the historic show dedicated to the gods of video games in Los Angeles. . In total, hundreds of games presented during several hours of conferences, each denser than the next.
E3 is dead, long live Summer Game Fest!
The official launch party could have fooled us, as it looked like a classic E3 conference in form. Only in form, unfortunately: a good E3-type conference creates a surprise. That wasn’t really the case here. With the exception of the announcement of a Remake of The Last of Us on PlayStation 5 (and later on PC), we saw a series of games that looked alike and shared the same lexical field: space and horror. If there were a few surprises like Aliens Dark Descentwe remained on our hunger.
Thankfully, Devolver Digital’s offbeat conference and Day of the Devs brought a bit more variety and drama.
Quantity does not mean quality
Friday, June 10, 6 p.m.: Day two kicks off with the IGN Summer of Gaming. In an hour, tons of games are linked together and are shown very quickly. It is very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Of the 44 games shown (in one hour, about an average of 1 min 20 per game if we forget the many pub breaks), we will quote sacrifice, Wanted: Dead by part of the team behind Ninja Gaiden and No Place for Bravery for its beautiful artistic direction.
In the aftermath, Netflix showed some games taken from its original creations, Tribeca put on a rather nice show, like last year, and the evening ended with the Freedom Games Showcase.
On Saturday 11, sequence of 4 very dense conferences. The prize goes to the Wholesome Direct with its hundred games presented.
Kojima as a guest star at Xbox
The evening that many players were waiting for was Sunday the 12th and for good reason: the only big manufacturer, Xbox in this case, was holding a real “old-fashioned” conference. The show lasted 95 minutes and Microsoft wanted to quickly make things clear: this is a focus on the next 12 months. Here, no game with a release scheduled after June 2023.
Consequence: the many titles that we know are in development in the many studios bought by the American giant, including the highly anticipated Fable Where Perfect Dark for example, were missing subscribers.
A majority of the games shown are directly included in Game Pass, Xbox’s subscription gaming service. And there were a few big surprises: Personas 3, 4, and 5 are finally released on a console other than a PlayStation and will arrive in the Game Pass from the end of 2022. Hideo Kojima is finally making a video game exclusively on Xbox platforms, a first for the famous creator close to the studios of Sony.
The PC Gaming Show closed the week and other publishers like Capcom showed off their games. The Summer Game Fest is expected to continue until at least June 21. Perhaps the occasion for Nintendo or Sony to show games.