Geoff Keighley's Four-Month Summer Game Fest Is Here To Cure Your Quarantine Blues

Geoff Keighley is a person who's been in the news a lot lately, mostly because he announced in February that he wouldn't be attending E3 this year. Keighley is a common sight at E3, as he hosted and produced the show's E3 Coliseum for a number of years prior to this announcement. Of course, E3 2020 wound up getting cancelled entirely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but now Keighley is back with something to take its place.

Today, Keighley announced Summer Game Fest, which will take place over the course of four months spanning May through August. Obviously, given that Summer Game Fest is slated to occur over four months, this is more of a series of events rather than one big one like E3, with Keighley billing it as a "first-of-its-kind, all-digital consumer celebration."

"In these uncertain and challenging times, it's more important than ever that video games serve as a common and virtual connection point between us all," Keighley said in a press release today. "SGF is an organizing principle that promises fans a whole season of video game news and other surprises from the comfort of home."

So far, a number of publishers and platforms have signed on for Summer Game Fest, including 2K, Activision, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Blizzard, Bungie, CD Projekt Red, Digital Extremes, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Private Division, Riot Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Steam, Square Enix, and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Today's announcement says that more information is coming about Microsoft's involvement next week, likely during the May 7th episode of Inside Xbox that promises to show us the first gameplay footage from Xbox Series X games.

Speaking of Microsoft, Keighley's announcement today says that Xbox, Steam, "and other platforms," will let fans download "playable, limited time demonstrations and trials of select game content." Steam will be doing this during the Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition, which is slated to run from June 9th to the 14th. Dates for other events like this will be revealed at a later time.

Keighley also says that the Summer Game Fest events will be streaming on all corners of the internet, whether that's on Facebook, Mixer, Twitch, Twitter, or YouTube. The website for the Summer Game Fest is already live, but it's fairly devoid of details at the moment. We'll let you know when Keighley and the Summer Game Fest team reveal more, so stay tuned.