Move the heck over EA Play, get out of my face Gamescom, New Game+ Expo is the only digital event I care about now.
We’re dealing with a lot of digital events for game announcements this summer, between the four-month long Summer Game Fest orchestrated by Game Awards boss Geoff Keighley, and other companies like Microsoft just making their own dedicated announcements throughout the season, there’s a lot to keep up with. Especially when you write the news and have to be keeping up with all of it, but I digress.
The New Game+ Expo is the one that I’ve got my sights on, as it appeals to my very specific, Japanese studio liker interests. The digital event will take place on Tuesday, June 23, at 8 a.m. Pacific, and will feature the following companies:
- Actill
- Playism
- Aksys Games
- Arc System Works
- GungHo America
- Idea Factory
- Inti Creates
- Koei Tecmo
- Natsume
- NIS America
- Sega
- Atlus
- SNK
- Spike Chunsoft
- Grasshopper Manufacture
- Wayforward
In other news:
- The Mafia: Trilogy is Available to Purchase, But Won’t Be Complete Until August
- Probably Impractical For Me to Upgrade to the Last of Us: Part II PS4, Right?
- Guilty Gear Strive Delayed Until 2021 Because of All This Shit Going On
Given that this is basically an E3 equivalent for a lot of these companies (everyone is trying to aim for June now that the big catch-all event has been cancelled due to coronavirus concerns), it’s probable we’ll hear a lot of major announcements coming out of New Game+ Expo. So Atlus might finally have some news on Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers (Arc System Works announce Persona 5 Arena, you cowards) or Sega might have something to say about a new installment in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Spike Chunsoft could be talking about the Danganronpa mobile ports, Natsume could talk some Story of Seasons. But others here we have no idea what they could be working on, so this has the potential to be a pretty dope showing if everyone brings their A game.
But this does mean that since everyone is flocking to the same summer window, we’ve got a crowded few weeks ahead of us. A bunch of indie devs are coming together for for the Guerrilla Collective on June 6, physical events are going fully digital like Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show, and EA Play. Somehow, E3 was cancelled and didn’t end up going digital, which could have theoretically saved us from all these other events spawning from its corpse, but you know, who can count on the ESA to do anything good for the people it works for when it doxxed all those people last year and then didn’t apologize about it?
At the very least, companies are finding ways to still keep announcements somewhat on track during the coronavirus pandemic, while other aspects of the industry are suffering due to work-from-home setups causing new problems for developers, retailers just fumbling around trying to get their shit together, and players having more trouble acquiring games than ever.
