Who Won Summer Game Fest 2026?

Every year, the video game industry spends a week and change in June announcing all the biggest and best games coming out in the next year. And every year, for some reason, I watch as much as possible.

I am not a huge gamer. I play maybe one or two new titles each year, if that, and they’re not usually brand-new – right now I’m making my way through Persona 5 Royal, which came out in 2019. And yet, I remain fascinated by the corporate pageantry that once coalesced around the E3 convention and now survives in the form of Summer Game Fest. Spearheaded by The Game Awards impresario Geoff Keighley, this gauntlet of virtual showcases from major games publishers more or less replaced E3 after COVID killed it off.

For me the appeal is less about the games themselves and more about who will “win” the proceedings – who will show the best games, drop the most exciting announcements, and take the lead in the unending console wars. There have been great moments in this unending battle: Sony famously undercutting the Sega Saturn’s launch price at the original E3 in 1995, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime declaring “My body is ready” while previewing Wii Fitness in 2007, and Sony (again) shading Xbox’s absurd policies around used games with a viral “instructional” video during E3 2013.

That level of silliness and one-upsmanship doesn’t really happen anymore. Major console manufacturers don’t battle over specs and exclusives like they used to, and the industry in general has taken on more of a collaborative, all-in-this-together mentality after years of economic shocks. And yet, it’s still fun to pit them all against each other, even in the abstract. Below, I evaluate each of the major presentations to determine who came out on top during Summer Game Fest 2026.

It’s hard to think of a platform more ill-equipped to deal with the current gaming landscape than Sony’s PlayStation. For years the console has gone all-in on immersive, narrative-driven experiences, releasing titles like The Last of Us: Part II and Ghost of Yotei that take dozens of hours to play, ignoring the success of more systemic, arcade-like experiences like Balatro, Blue Prince, Hades, and Slay the Spire. Their attempts to build a more diverse slate have yielded mixed results: While cutesy platformer Astro Bot was a critical and commercial success, the massive failure of service-based hero shooter Concord was a deep embarrassment for the company.

Unfortunately Sony seems to have learned all the wrong lessons from these recent issues. Their State of Play presentation on June 2nd tripled down on the third-person, cinematic action-adventure format the system has made its bread and butter, opening with Insomniac’s bloody Wolverine game and also featuring the likes of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, Dune Awakening, Control: Resonant, Kemuri, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and the truly cringey Until Dawn 2. Survival horror was a big trend, with the Jurassic Park-like The Lost Wild alongside Silent Hill Townfall and hospital-themed Ill. The publisher also pulled out fighting games (Marvel Tokon), platformers (Rayman Legends Retold), and Capcom’s aerial combat sim Ace Combat 8: Wings of Thieve among others. But these were not the main attraction by any stretch.

By far the biggest announcement was a new God of War game, debuted with an uninterrupted 20 minutes of gameplay. Focusing on series lead Kratos’ late wife Faye as she battles her way through the underworld of the gods, God of War: Laufey looks to be a perfect example of everything wrong with Sony’s approach: A bloated, badly-written, overlong, on-rails, graphically-sophisticated action game produced by an older generation of creators that views cinematic, story-driven games as the height of the medium. It’s Millennial Developer Syndrome in action, full of “focus, M.” style dialogue, ugly aesthetics, and bizarre, ill-fitting elements like the gelatinous cube voiced by Jack Quaid named “Phranque.” Personally I can’t see myself ever wanting to give an hour of my life to this kind of game, let alone 50 or even 100. I don’t think hi-spec graphics and movie-esque storytelling is indicative of quality – or, more importantly, fun.

Sadly it seems that Sony is stuck on this model. The PlayStation 5 is defined by its ability to deliver the most immersive, hi-spec experiences a console can provide, and Sony will continue making games that satisfy that demand even as competitors catch up with them and the gaming audience’s disinterest in graphical fidelity as a selling point continues to plummet. But they do so at their own peril, ignoring games that represent an entirely different, arguably more forward-thinking approach to game design. They’re not interactive movies that consider gameplay a stepping stone to cutscenes. Instead, the story is a part of the play, as in the progression and setbacks of Hades’ roguelike structure or the puzzle-mystery of Blue Prince. Balatro jettisons story entirely, serving up a satisfying arcade-style variant of poker. As tastes change and new genres take the spotlight, hopefully Sony will realize that games are better when they’re made to be enjoyed rather than made to be immersive.

Geoff Keighley began his Summer Game Fest presentation (the only one given on an actual stage, for what it’s worth) with a worrisome statistic: More games were uploaded to Steam last year than ever. The market is oversaturated, and it’s harder and harder for even the most resourced developers to cut through the noise – and harder still for independents. It would have been nice for Keighley to feature a few smaller games that could use the support – and he did, to an extent, showing two new Cuphead titles as the second announcement of the showcase and a handful of other indie titles throughout. But then again, Keighley understands more than most what we’re actually here for. Ever the showman, he treated viewers to a jaw-dropping series of back-to-back announcements: Resident Evil: Veronica, Alien: Isolation 2, and a preview of the new game from Shadow of the Colossus legend Fumito Ueda, now titled gen ATLAS. Hype moments and aura – this is what E3 was built on, and this is how SGF makes the case for itself as its successor.

And speaking of hype moments and aura – is that the undead visage of Tupac in RGG Studios’ new game? What the fuck?

Indeed, it wasn’t enough for the era-spanning yakuza drama Stranger Than Heaven to have secured the likeness of famed Japanese tough-guy actor Bunta Sugawara, who’s been dead for 12 years. They also made a deal with the estate of Tupac Shakur – which is controlled by a former Warner Records exec whom the Shakur family is currently suing – to use an AI-generated version of the slain rapper in the game. And apparently perennial sellout Snoop Dogg, who is also in the game, helped facilitate the deal. The whole situation is very sordid and despicable and has made a number of observers quite upset; Washington Post games critic Gene Park called the studio “desperate and lost” for embracing this digital necromancy.

The rest of the show lacked the stunning impact of its first ten or so minutes until the very end, when Square Enix revealed a long look at the upcoming conclusion to its Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy (which I could care less about myself, but then again, hype moments and aura). Elsewhere, there were plenty of Chinese wuxia-style action games, a new Gundam mecha battler, and collabs that were exciting (Final Fantasy’s Tifa in Street Fighter 6) and not so inexplicable (Evangelion in Sonic Racing, Cyberpunk Edgerunners in Wurthering Waves). Original Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Desilets revealed his witchy new game 1666: Amsterdam, and the unexpected announcement of a sequel to Stellar Blade came just before the end. Summer Game Fest was overstuffed, vexing, and occasionally thrilling. But most importantly of all, it was entertaining.

Microsoft’s presentation on Sunday, June 7 might as well have been a battle between Atlus and everyone else. And Atlus won.

The JRPG specialists came fully loaded. It would have been enough if they had merely announced the release date for their highly-anticipated Persona 4 Reload, a gorgeous-looking remaster of the hit series’ fan-favorite fourth installment. But they doubled down, revealing Persona 6, the first new game in the series in ten years. We got a logo, a creepy trailer, and that’s about it, but given the extraordinary impact of its predecessor – Persona 5 is one of the most highly-acclaimed RPGs of all time and brilliantly regenerated the genre with its incredible stylishness, contemporary setting, and picaresque premise – it’s enough to overshadow the rest of the field.

That’s mostly because the rest of Xbox’s slate wasn’t particularly impressive. There was an odd announcement here and there that generated some actual excitement – Crazy Taxi: World Tour, a new Metro installment, the first new Spyro The Dragon game in decades, the lovely Ghibli-inspired indie Vivarium – but for the most part, Xbox offered very little in the way of new and novel experiences. New titles were few and far between, making the presentation feel like an endless stream of content update announcements for existing, uninspiring titles – is anyone really still playing Sea of Thieves or Fallout 76? The few new first party titles felt even less exciting, with the showcase opened by Gears of War: E-Day and closed with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and its neo-Korean War setting. We may be politically back in the 2000s, but Microsoft seems to be stuck there culturally, right down to the green plastic-skinned anniversary-edition Series X25 console they teased (which does look pretty cool, I’ll give them that much).

As much as the entire industry is suffering, Xbox’s presentation seems to summarize how truly dire things are for Microsoft’s gaming division. The company gambled on Game Pass and a multi-platform model combining console and PC as a way forward for the brand, falling for the same streaming service delusion that Hollywood is starting to pull itself out of. Their studio buying spree of the late ‘10s resulted in more closures and project cancellations than games, and the few that did come out, like Bethesda’s Starfield, proved disappointing. As a partial result of all this mismanagement and poor foresight, Xbox console hardware sales dropped 70 percent in 2025. Nobody seems to want an Xbox anymore, and with such a mediocre slate of upcoming titles, Microsoft isn’t giving anyone much reason to. At this rate, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them go the way of Sega and exit the console wars entirely. Regardless as to whether Xbox lives or dies, Persona 6 isn’t going anywhere – and it’s probably not coming out any time soon either.

Nintendo always does things their way, and unexpectedly announcing a presentation after all the others had wrapped is par for the course for them. Tuesday’s Nintendo Direct immediately became my most anticipated showcase of the bunch, if only because I actually own a Switch 2. I was hoping they’d have something big in store, something that would justify investing in a new, expensive console in its second year of release.

For sure, the company dished out some exciting announcements that showed off the diversity of its catalog. Alongside content updates for system flagship titles Pokémon Pokopia and Donkey Kong Bananza, casual gamers can look forward to Rhythm Heaven Groove and the pleasant surprise of Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, a new installment of the motion-control sports franchise that began with Wii Sports. We got a release date for Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave and a new Xenoblade title, Xenoblade Genesis, which will excite fans of the two JRPG franchises. Third party titles, a perennial area of difficulty for Nintendo, were also present in full force. Chief among them were the hotly-anticipated Kingdom Hearts IV being announced as a day-one Switch 2 title, as well as the briefest of updates on From Software’s system-exclusive The Duskbloods, which is hosting a closed network test this summer. And a few notable ports including Stellar Blade and Atlus’ fantasy JRPG Metaphor: ReFantazio will land later this year.

Of course, the biggest piece of news came at the end: A full remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of the most beloved and celebrated games of all time. This should be the killer app, the next big must-have title for Switch 2. And yet, it feels like something else entirely: A stopgap. This is the second modern remake of a legacy title we’ve seen from the company in two months after they revealed a spruced-up, graphically advanced version of the Nintendo 64 Star Fox game from nearly 30 years ago. It’s not a new game, nor is Ocarina of Time, and while playing the hits and updating their classic titles is a tried-and-tested Nintendo strategy, it still feels disappointing, especially on the heels of the innovative recent Zelda titles Tears of the Kingdom and Echoes of Wisdom.

The appearance of these two titles feels indicative of Nintendo’s presence in the broader industry crisis. Development is getting costlier and taking longer while innovation in game design has slowed, especially at the AAA level. And at Nintendo specifically, leadership changes are coming as the golden generation of Shigeru Miyamoto and other creators faces retirement. For sure, the Japanese firm has more leeway than most thanks to outstanding Switch 2 sales, powerful brand recognition, and a lucrative expansion into the movie business. The firm’s company culture may have insulated it from the short-sighted decisions and mismanagement that has troubled the likes of Epic Games and Ubisoft (not to mention Microsoft). But these classic remasters indicate that whatever truly impressive titles the company is prepping won’t be ready for some time. It’s a meal of small plates rather than an impressive main course, and it isn’t going to satisfy the public for long. Nintendo can’t sell Switches on brand recognition alone. They need new games – they can’t just reheat the classics.

Alongside the big console makers and the SGF show itself, dozens of smaller showcases stream on YouTube throughout the week. It really does prove Keighley’s statistic right – there’s just too many games to pay attention to, let alone play – but you do get a few diamonds in the rough here and there. Here are some highlights:

Wholesome Games Direct – The only thing more surprising about the sheer amount of cozy farming sims, light puzzlers, and creation-driven games in this presentation is the amount of pastel hair-dyed cozy gaming influencers on hand to dish them out. Why are there so many of them? Who is playing all of these games? Is there really a multi-national force of Tumblr veterans that will buy every Animal Crossing-esque life sim set in a tiny village with cute animals? In any case, the few standouts for me (as in the few games I wouldn’t be embarrassed to admit having played) included Dressmaker, a detail-heavy fashion design game focused on gothic and Victorian garmentry; Planet Zoo, a zoo building sim in the mould of Zoo Tycoon; and Moomin Midsummer Madness, starring the beloved Finnish cartoon creatures.

Story Rich Showcase – Apparently run by the developers of Citizen Sleeper, this indie showcase focused on narrative-driven games ended up platforming a lot of murder mystery fare more than anything else. A few intriguing titles included the Metal Gear Solid-style text adventure Burn Nine and a cool anime-esque pixel-art battler, Catechesis.

Future Games Show – While the most interesting segments in this two-hour show featured deep dives on already presented games such as Ace Combat 8 and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Resynced, there were a few intriguing titles in the mix such as the Snowpiercer-inspired FPS Enginefall, the antigrav racer AGX GP, and the lovely-looking eco-driven planet-builder Bioeden. There was also a lot of cornball nonsense – a shooter set during the American Revolution, licensed games based on the horror films Halloween and Hellraiser, and something called WTF: Waifu Tactical Force that made me collapse with laughter. The main event of the showcase came at the end with a look at Exodus, a new space opera RPG from a bunch of ex-Bioware devs that’s pitched as a spiritual successor to the original Mass Effect trilogy. To me it looked mostly like a more generic version of those games, and certain traits (cringey dialogue straight out of a Marvel movie, bland characters, the voice acting talents of Matthew McConnaughey) don’t engender confidence. Nevertheless, it still looks interesting enough to watch out for.

PC Gaming Show – By the time this showcase rolled around on Sunday afternoon I was very much checked out, and the irritating ‘90s sitcom framing device used by the presenters made the show even more aggravating to sit through. I still managed to note a few games: A Star Trek basebuilding game; Carcass Clad, a new title from the creators of Mouthwashing; About Fishing, which is….about fishing, I guess; and a new Vampire: The Masquerade entry styled after Disco Elysium. It’s a miracle I paid attention to these after three days of an endless slog of showcases and trailers – and it’ll be a miracle if I do it all again next year. But for some unknowable reason, I probably will.

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