Take a behind-the-scenes tour of Summer Game Fest Play Days 2024

Summer Game Fest 2024 officially wrapped up on June 10, after a long weekend of game previews, developer interviews and unlimited cold brew — but we just published our final stories from the show this week (held under embargo, of course). Those were Mat Smith's impressions of Black Myth: Wukong and Tales of the Shire, and they capped off a month of juicy video game news out of the summer's biggest show.

No, Silksong did not make an appearance.

There were, however, plenty of bright and shiny games at the show, and many of them were available to play for the first time ever. Our hands-on and first-look stories include Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Astro Bot, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, Lego Horizon Adventures, Marvel Rivals, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Neva and Skate Story.

On top of the playable previews, Day of the Devs, Devolver, Xbox and Ubisoft held their own showcases brimming with new information and game reveals, and the big Summer Game Fest kickoff event was similarly stacked. Just to name a few of the hits: There's a new Doom with a medieval flair (and flail), Civilization VII is coming out in 2025, Slitterhead will land on November 8, Heart Machine is building a gorgeous-looking platformer called Possessor(s), and the Fable reboot is due out in 2025. There are also new Xbox Series consoles coming out this fall — and as it turns out, Microsoft's mid-cycle refresh says a lot about the Xbox hardware business as a whole, especially when compared to the company's internal roadmap that leaked in October 2022.

After E3 collapsed on itself like a sad soufflé, Summer Game Fest has emerged as the home of mid-year video game goodness, offering a little more room for smaller studios and plenty of space to grow. It's been four years of digital and physical Summer Game Fest events at this point, and the show just keeps getting better.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!