Black Ops 6 and other Summer Game Fest highlights

Gaming’s annual preview marathon happened over the weekend, with dozens of latest titles on present.

Towards the backdrop of an business wrestling with layoffs and questions over its future, expectations of seeing many new blockbuster titles have been low this 12 months.

Microsoft capped off the principle occasions with a profitable showcase, and followers of Name of Obligation acquired an prolonged have a look at upcoming, Nineteen Nineties-set Black Ops 6.

It will be the primary sport within the sequence to look on the Xbox Sport Go service, and its builders shall be hoping to banish the reminiscence of final 12 months’s poorly acquired Trendy Warfare III marketing campaign.

However that was simply the icing on a really busy cake.

BBC Newsbeat spent our weekend watching hours and hours of announcement livestreams so you did not have to.

Listed below are among the highlights.

Although the traces of console exclusivity have gotten an increasing number of blurry, showcase season wouldn’t be full and not using a post-match debate about who ‘received’.

And most agreed that Microsoft placed on a robust show.

It wanted one. Up to now Xbox’s 2024 has been dominated by headlines about mass layoffs and criticism over the closure of four in-house studios.

Microsoft’s showcase didn’t dwell on any of that, but it surely did take the prospect to remind us all that it now owns a giant chunk of the AAA video games business because of its $65bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Free to flex its merger muscle tissue this 12 months after lastly sealing the deal, it kicked off with a montage from upcoming Name of Obligation: Black Ops 6, which acquired its personal devoted preview straight after the principle occasion.

From there it launched into an action-packed trailer for Doom: The Darkish Ages, and the remainder of the one-hour session crammed in a bunch of flagship franchises together with Warcraft, Diablo, Elder Scrolls On-line and the recently revitalised Fallout 76.

At instances it felt like a biggest hits reel, and Microsoft appeared to drive that time house when it closed the principle preview with footage of a brand new Gears of Warfare sport. The soundtrack of Gary Jules’s Mad World was the identical tune used within the influential trailer for the unique 2006 sport within the sequence. A full-circle second.

Followers additionally acquired glimpses of Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle, Fable, the Good Darkish reboot and Ukraine-developed STALKER 2.

Critics would say the showcase may’ve been extra different – once you boil it down it was heavy on open-world motion, RPGs and first-person shooters. However followers would level out these are the genres Xbox constructed its model upon.

And there was additionally reward for the range on present – most of the titles seen featured feminine protagonists or folks belonging to ethnic minorities as their fundamental characters.

Microsoft’s gaming division has been accused of missing route not too long ago, and questions will stay about the place it needs to take the Xbox model in future and whether or not all of its studios will survive.

However for one night time, no less than, it efficiently steered the dialog again to its video games.

Host Geoff Keighley warned followers forward of this 12 months’s occasion that the headline Summer time Sport Fest showcase can be a “gentle” affair with no large surprises.

And he was just about true to his phrase.

Except for a visitor look from Treatment Leisure’s Sam Lake saying that new content material for 2023 sport of the 12 months contender Alan Wake 2 can be launched the following day, the occasion didn’t include many drop-your-coffee moments.

And aside from Civilization VII – an replace within the long-running technique sequence – and a brand new Sonic sport, there weren’t too many appearances from well-known franchises.

However we did discover out that fashionable on-line shooter Valorant is coming to consoles, acquired a short glimpse of the upcoming Harry Potter Quidditch Championship, and a star-studded trailer for Killer Bean. We additionally noticed the primary set of video games from horror film studio Blumhouse, together with a brand new title from Bafta-winning sport director Sam Barlow.

Sony and Lego additionally revealed that their collaboration based mostly on PlayStation’s Horizon sequence can even be coming to PC and Nintendo Change, however not Xbox.

Up to now this 12 months most of gaming’s actual breakout success tales reminiscent of Palworld, Helldivers II and Animal Effectively have come from smaller studios.

And, for these individuals who did really feel the in any other case well-received Xbox showcase was a bit samey, there was a spread of indie trailerfests to maintain followers busy.

In addition to two devoted streams after the principle occasion, there have been additionally classes devoted to women-led video games, titles from Latin American builders and Healthful Direct – an hour celebrating “uplifting, compassionate, cozy video games”.

Amongst Us developer Innersloth unveiled its new funding mission, Outersloth, geared toward serving to different indie builders to get their video games out.

With headlines specializing in troubles on the triple-A finish of the video games business, the battle for indies to seek out funding can get missed. And Innersloth – a pandemic success story – acquired reward for paying again a few of its personal breakout success.

Thirsty Suitors studio Outerloop Video games (no relation), is likely one of the first builders to get funding from Outersloth.

Co-founder Chandana Ekanayake informed BBC Asian Community the mission is “nice” for indie studios “which can be self-sufficient and searching to have the ability to succeed within the video games enterprise”, by giving them a substitute for conventional publishing offers.

Rumours and wishful considering are the gas of the pre-showcase hype machine, and this 12 months hypothesis was rife.

There have been some fairly spot-on predictions, however not all of them got here true.

Most notably, a rumoured Microsoft handheld didn’t make an look, however in a follow-up interview with gaming website IGN, Xbox boss Phil Spencer urged there can be extra {hardware} bulletins.

Claims that we might see new releases within the Resident Evil franchise did not come to move, and there was no signal of Borderlands 4, even when we did see a brief clip from the upcoming film adaptation.

And when you braved the reside feedback sections in the course of the SGF and Xbox showcases you might need questioned why folks stored shouting “SKONG”.

It is a reference to Hole Knight: Silksong, the sequel to 2017’s mega-popular Metroidvania journey developed by the tiny crew at Australian developer Group Cherry.

There’s nonetheless another showcase from publishing large Ubisoft nonetheless to return, and the entire weekend’s reveals could be watched once more here.

Extra reporting by Bertin Huynh.

Take heed to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or hear again here.