E3 might be dead but The Game Awards goes from strength to strength, with this year’s event promising more categories and more previews.
The main reason this year’s summer games drought has seemed so extreme is that not only have there been no major game releases (no, Saints Row doesn’t count) but there were almost no preview events either, even though last year most publishers made an effort to compensate for the lack of an E3 expo.
As such, the biggest preview event of the year is now unquestionably The Game Awards in December, which gets bigger every year and is now confirmed to take place on December 8.
The show is essentially E3 and the video game Oscars all in one and this year will be adding a Best Adaptation category to cover games that adapt things like movies, TV shows, podcasts, and comic books.
For the first time since the pandemic started, this year’s event will be a full, in-person live event, although unless you’re going to be in L.A. in December that’s not going to make much difference.
Instead, most people will be tuning in to one of the 40 different video platforms the show runs on, including YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook. Last year 85 million people watched the show one way or the other and that’s expected to increase again this year.
In terms of previews, there’s no indication of how many there’ll be exactly, just the promise of ‘spectacular new game announcements and world premieres.’
Creator and host Geoff Keighley has highlighted that last year Jim Carrey and Ben Schwartz premiered the first trailer for the Sonic 2 movie, which may be a hint at more movie related revelations this year.
As usual, this year’s show will also feature a number of musical performances, including those by The Game Awards
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