Eight trends I’ve noticed from watching hour of livestreams from Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox and more

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Did you spend hours of your weekend watching a relentless series of video game adverts? No? I don’t blame you – Summer Game Fest, the collection of livestreams that has arisen in place of the giant annual E3 video game expo in Los Angeles, is extremely overwhelming. There are the bigger, longer shows: the PlayStation and Xbox streams, the main SGF show hosted by Geoff Keighley and Lucy James, Future’s duet of the Future Games Show and the PC Gaming Show. Each show is two hours long. Then there are all the indie showcases: cosy games, female-led games, Black voices in gaming, Day of the Devs. Between them, they show off hundreds of games that might pique your interest.

I picked out exactly 34 highlights here: the biggest news, the most interesting-looking smaller games. But from the barrage of trailers I was also able to discern some trends. Here’s what we can learn.

Single player is so back | There were few announcements for live-service games or online hero shooters, which have preoccupied games publishers for years. Instead: we saw many expensive-looking single-player games. There was God of War: Laufey; Marvel’s Wolverine; Exodus, the new game from a bunch of Naughty Dog veterans; Crossfire, a cinematic shooter in the Naughty Dog mould; even a teaser for Persona 6, the newest in Atlus’s brilliant series of Japanese role-playing games. We saw so many of these that I’m actually slightly worried that they can’t possibly all sell enough to make money, dooming us all to a free-to-play nightmare.

Horror is everywhere | Gwilym Mumford wrote in The Guide, our sister newsletter, about box-office hits Backrooms and Obsession marking a real moment for horror on the big screen. Well, it’s a trend on smaller screens, too.

I lost count of the number of new horror games announced, from the ancient gods of the genre (Silent Hill: Townfall, Resident Evil Veronica) to a bunch of indie riffs on them. Tenebris Somnia is a pixel-art point-and-click-style horror that switches alarmingly to filmic live-action cutscenes. Catechesis is about a possessed altar boy, inspired by Deadly Premonition. Ill is an unashamedly disgusting gore-fest. There was even a rhythm horror game called Wicked Delights, for those who like their terror with a musical accompaniment. As I wrote in last week’s newsletter, the brilliant choice-driven slasher game Until Dawn is getting a sequel; so is the legendarily creepy Alien: Isolation.

Speaking of gore, a lot of game marketing feels super gross at the minute. There were so many decapitations, exploding heads, spilled guts and neck stabs that made me think: is this necessary? I became worryingly immune to it after a while.

Retro vibes … the Xbox Controller X25 Special Edition.

Y2K nostagia is in | To celebrate 25 years of Xbox, Microsoft showed an ad for a transparent-green special edition Series X console set with an extremely 2001 teenager’s bedroom. Meanwhile, the PC Gaming Show on Sunday took place on the set of a fake late-90s sitcom show. These were far from the only throwbacks. For a long time the fashionable retro aesthetic was early-90s pixel art, but now it’s becoming circa-2000 early-3D. I also noticed many riffs on lost genres of that time, from the antigrav racer to the skating game. That’s not to mention the actual turn-of-the-millennium games and characters that are being resuscitated: among them Crazy Taxi, Virtua Fighter, Rayman and Spyro the Dragon.

We have our pick of Chinese action games | After Black Myth: Wukong sold a squillion copies, we’re seeing a lot more very good-looking Chinese-made action games featuring prominently in these showcases. Dinghai: The Ocean Pillar, Blood Message and Swords of Legends all look fantastically polished, and Where Winds Meet is just out on Xbox.

Almost nothing was live | Aside from the Summer Game Fest stage show, not a single one of these showcases was in front of a live audience. This prerecorded sterility left no room for organic reactions. As annoying as the whoops and hollers of a live audience can be, they do inject some life into these events. Will we ever get another Keanu-Reeves-is-in-Cyberpunk-2077 moment?

Xbox is back to doing (some) exclusives | The console wars were dead; long live the console wars. Under new leadership, Xbox is now keeping a few of its games on its own platform again, namely the new Gears of War and the steampunk-looking Dishonored-like Clockwork Revolution. Other games will eventually come out on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch 2.

Horror fishing games | A micro-trend, but I counted two horror fishing games. Two. The first is tinyBuild’s Last Harbor, a zombie game where you’re stuck on a boat, venturing onto land to face the nasty monsters. And in Dread moor you take your wee vessel out to fish on very weird seas. I bet we have one of my 2023 favourites, Dredge, to thank for this.

Everyone really hates AI | Last year in some of the smaller showcases we saw quite a few games that were clearly relying heavily on generative AI art. Now studios are running a mile from it, trying hard to distance themselves from any association with genAI. This is exemplified by the new Crazy Taxi, whose somewhat ambiguous AI disclosure note on Steam has inspired significant backlash.

What to play

Unsurprisingly, I have note had the most time to actually play any games recently, but a lot of the past week’s announcements came with accompanying free taster demos. Nintendo has just released a slice of the forthcoming Star Fox remake on Switch 2; I have mixed feelings about this game, but actually playing it is starting to bring me round. You can play the first half-hour of Assassin’s Creed co-creator Patrice Désilets’ new weird witchy game 1666: Amsterdam. The newly announced Star Trek: Outposts Unknown colony-simulation game is also available to try, and I’m about to dip into black-and-white photography adventure Toem 2’s demo.

Available on: The demo pages on eShop, PS Store, Xbox Store, Epic or Steam
Estimated playtime: up to one hour each

What to read

Just as Pushing Buttons was going to metaphorical press, Nintendo held yet another showcase stream – surprising us with the announcements of new Fire Emblem and Xenoblade games, a new Nintendo Switch Sports, a proper reveal of Disney-flavoured role-playing game Kingdom Hearts 4 and… a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, out later this year. I needed a minute to get myself together after seeing that trailer. Nintendo Life has all the details on what was shown.
British home-computer appreciators will especially enjoy this Easter egg in the new Lego Batman game.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is still coming out in November, and as a result of competitors scrambling to keep their new games away from it, the release calendar for August, September and October is looking absolutely packed. As Kotaku’s Zack Zweizen writes, this list is intimidating for any player, but for the games media? Terrifying.

What to click

Question Block

Before the California developer Toys for Bob announced its new Spyro the Dragon game on Sunday, I spoke to studio head Paul Yan and creative director Lou Studdert about bringing the little purple guy back. Given that Toys for Bob made the Spyro Reignited Trilogy and the Crash Bandicoot remakes, I think they are the best people in the world to answer this question: “Who’s the better 90s platforming icon, Spyro or Crash Bandicoot?”

Says Paul: “Why are you making us choose between our children? Who does that? I cannot answer that one.”

And Lou: “You know, I will say this: Crash Bandicoot is, by far, my favourite biped. Spyro hands down, favourite quadruped.”

It’s fair to say that the question is still open. One thing’s for sure, though, they’re both better than Bubsy.

If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on [email protected].

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