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Title: Video Games Weekly: I still don't miss E3

Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2025 21:41:08 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/video-games-w...

Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday,
broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings
about video game trends and related topics from me, a reporter who's covered
the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game
stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some
headlines from outside of Engadget.

Please enjoy ΓÇö and I'll see you next week.

ItΓÇÖs the week of Summer Game Fest, so IΓÇÖm mentally wrapped up in a
complex web of embargoes, meetings, schedules and cryptic invites, and I can
already smell the plasticky, sanitized air that accompanies video game
conventions of all sizes. Mmm, smells like pixels.

This will be my third SGF and IΓÇÖm looking forward to it, as usual. I
appreciate the eventΓÇÖs focus on independent projects, diverse creators and
smaller-scale publishers, particularly with shows like Day of the Devs,
Wholesome Direct, Women-Led Games, and the Latin American and Southeast Asian
games showcases. I deeply believe that innovation in the industry stems from
these untethered, experimental spaces, and SGF has consistently provided room
for these types of experiences to shine.

I appreciate SGF even more after spending seven years wandering the cavernous
halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center, covering the Electronic
Entertainment Expo. E3 was exciting in its own right and I feel privileged to
have attended it so many times, but it was also a soulless kind of show. E3
was unwelcoming to independent creators and packed with corporate swag, and
by the time Sony decided to stop attending in 2019, it felt like an
expensive, out-of-touch misrepresentation of the video game industry as a
whole. The best parts of E3 in its final years were the unaffiliated events
hosted by Devolver Digital, which took place in a nearby parking lot packed
with Airstream trailers, food trucks and fabulous, up-and-coming indie games.
It felt a lot like SGF, in fact.

I wrote about this phenomenon in 2018, in a story that questioned whether the
video game industry needed E3 at all. Perhaps because IΓÇÖm a witch but
mostly due to the pandemic, E3 shut down in 2020 and it never re-emerged as
an in-person show. The Entertainment Software Association hosted one virtual
session in 2021, but nothing afterward, and E3 was officially declared dead
in December 2023. Meanwhile, the video game market has continued to grow,
driven by a maturing indie segment, mobile play and harsh crunch-layoff
cycles at the AAA level.

Now, the ESA is back with a new video game showcase called iicon, the
Interactive Innovation Conference, heading to Las Vegas in April 2026. The
industryΓÇÖs biggest names are involved, including Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo,
Epic Games, Electronic Arts, Disney, Amazon and Take-Two Interactive, and the
show is poised to be ΓÇ£a space for visionaries across industries to come
together,ΓÇ¥ according to ESA president Stanley Pierre-Louis. E3 2.0 has
arrived, and it seems to be as AAA-focused as ever. For what itΓÇÖs worth,
Summer Game Fest has its own version of a AAA thought-leader summit this year
with The Game Business Live.

Meanwhile, the ESA has remained silent ΓÇö even when directly asked ΓÇö as
some of the industryΓÇÖs most influential companies roll back their
diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, at a time when women, POC and
LGBT+ employees are enduring active existential threats. And during Pride
Month, no less.

All of this is to say, IΓÇÖm stoked for Summer Game Fest this year. It all
kicks off with a live show on Friday, June 6, and we have a rundown of the
full schedule right here. WeΓÇÖll be publishing hands-on previews, developer
interviews and news directly from SGF over the weekend and beyond, so stay
tuned to EngadgetΓÇÖs Gaming hub.

The news Playtonic layoffs

Playtonic, the studio behind Yooka-Laylee, has laid off an undisclosed number
of employees across multiple departments, including production, art, game
design, narrative design and UI/UX. In a message shared on X, the studioΓÇÖs
leaders said, ΓÇ£This isnΓÇÖt simply a difficult moment, itΓÇÖs a period of
profound change in how games are created and financed. The landscape is
shifting, and with it, so must we.ΓÇ¥ PlaytonicΓÇÖs latest game, Yooka-
Replaylee, is due to come out this year. Though Playtonic is a small,
privately owned company (with a minority investment from Tencent), the timing
of the layoffs fits the established playbook of many AAA studios, which
operate with periods of crunch and bulk layoffs baked into their business
plans.

EA cans Black Panther

Electronic Arts revealed its plans to make a single-player, third-person
Black Panther game back in 2023 as part of a broader Marvel push at the
studio, but apparently, things have changed. EA canceled its Black Panther
project and closed the studio that was building it, Cliffhanger Games. EA
Motive, the team behind the stellar Dead Space remake, is still working on an
Iron Man game, as far as we know.

Roll7 returns to Steam

Any time I can gas up Rollerdrome or OlliOlli World, IΓÇÖm going to do it.
After being delisted from Steam more than a year ago, Rollerdrome and
OlliOlli World have returned to the storefront to fulfill all of your flow-
state needs. Both games come from Roll7, a London-based studio that Take-Two
purchased in November 2021 and shut down in May 2024, removing Rollerdrome
and Olli Olli World from Steam in the process.

Playdate Season 2 is live and itΓÇÖs good

Have we convinced you to get a Playdate yet? Whatever your answer, Playdate
Season 2 is live right now, adding two new games to the crank-powered system
each week until July 3. EngadgetΓÇÖs resident Playdate expert Cheyenne
Macdonald has a review of the initial batch, which includes Fulcrum Defender
from Subset Games, Dig! Dig! Dino! from Dom2D and Fáyer, and Blippo+, a
fever dream masquerading as a video game. And while youΓÇÖre in this
headspace, check out Igor BonifacicΓÇÖs enlightening interview with Subset
Games co-founder Jay Ma.

Ex-Ubisoft bosses face sexual harassment trial in France

Three former Ubisoft executives appeared in French court on June 2, accused
by multiple employees at the studio of sexual harassment, bullying and, in
one defendantΓÇÖs case, attempted sexual assault. The lawsuit alleges Serge
Hascoët, Tommy François and Guillaume Patrux regularly engaged in
misconduct and fostered a toxic culture at Ubisoft, and it follows a public
reckoning at the studio in 2020, plus arrests in 2023.

The Switch 2 is coming

NintendoΓÇÖs Switch 2 officially comes out this week, on June 5. We'll have a
review of the new console as soon as we can, but in the meantime you can find
all of the information you need regarding pre-orders in our handy guide.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/video-games-w...
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