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Title: Everything new at Summer Game Fest 2025: Xbox handheld, Resident Evil
Requiem and more

Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2025 00:34:08 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/everything-ne...

It's early June, which means it's time for a ton of video game events! Rising
from the ashes of E3, Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest is now the premium
gaming event of the year, just inching ahead of… Geoff Keighley's Game
Awards in December. Unlike the show it replaced, Summer Game Fest is an
egalitarian affair, spotlighting games from AAA developers and small indies
across a diverse set of livestreams. SGF 2025 includes 15 individual events
running from June 3-9 ΓÇö you can find the full Summer Game Fest 2025
schedule here ΓÇö and we're smack dab in the middle of that programming right
now.

We're covering SGF 2025 with a small team on the ground in LA and a far
larger group of writers tuning in remotely to the various livestreams. Expect
game previews, interviews and reactions to arrive over the coming days (the
show's in-person component runs from Saturday-Monday), and a boatload of new
trailers and release date announcements in between.

Through it all, we're collating the biggest announcements right here, with
links out to more in-depth coverage where we have it, in chronological order.

Tuesday, June 3 State of Unreal: The Witcher IV and Fortnite AI

Epic hitched its wagon to SGF this year, aligning its annual developer Unreal
Fest conference, which last took place in the fall of 2024, with the consumer
event. The conference was held in Orlando, Florida, from June 2-5, with well
over a hundred developer sessions focused on Unreal Engine. The highlight was
State of Unreal, which was the first event on the official Summer Game Fest
schedule. Amid a bunch of very cool tech demos and announcements, we got some
meaningful updates on Epic's own Fortnite and CD PROJEKT RED's upcoming The
Witcher IV.

The Witcher IV was first unveiled at The Game Awards last year, and we've
heard very little about it since. At State of Unreal, we got a tech demo for
Unreal Engine 5.6, played in real time on a base PS5. The roughly 10-minute
slot featured a mix of gameplay and cinematics, and showed off a detailed,
bustling world. Perhaps the technical highlight was Nanite Foliage, an
extension of UE5's Nanite system for geometry that renders foliage without
the level of detail pop-in that is perhaps the most widespread graphical
aberration still plaguing games today. On the game side, we saw a town filled
with hundreds of NPCs going about their business. The town itself wasn't
quite on the scale of The Witcher III's Novigrad City, but nonetheless felt
alive in a way beyond anything the last game achieved.

It's fair to say that Fortnite's moment in the spotlight was… less
impressive. Hot on the heels of smooshing a profane Darth Vader AI into the
game, Epic announced that creators will be able to roll their own AI NPCs
into the game later this year.

Wednesday, June 4 PlayStation State of Play: Marvel Tōkon, Silent Hill f and
the return of Lumines

Another company getting a headstart on proceedings was Sony, who threw its
third State of Play of the year onto the Summer Game Fest schedule a couple
days ahead of the opening night event. It was a packed stream by Sony's
standards, with over 20 games and even a surprise hardware announcement.

The most time was given to Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, a new PlayStation
Studios tag fighter that fuses Marvel Superheroes with anime visuals. It's
also 4 versus 4, which is wild. It's being developed by Arc System Works, the
team perhaps best known for the Guilty Gear series. It's coming to PS5 and PC
in 2026. Not-so-coincidentally, Sony also announced Project Defiant, a
wireless fight stick that'll support PS5 and PC and arrive in… 2026.

Elsewhere, we got a parade of release dates, with concrete dates for Sword of
the Sea (August 19) Baby Steps (September 8) and Silent Hill f (September
25). We also got confirmation of that Final Fantasy Tactics remaster (coming
September 30), an an all-new... let's call it aspirational "2026" date for
Pragmata, which, if you're keeping score, was advertised alongside the launch
of the PS5. Great going, Capcom!

Rounding out the show was a bunch of smaller announcements. We heard about a
new Nioh game, Nioh 3, coming in 2026; Suda51's new weirdness Romeo is a Dead
Man; and Lumines Arise, a long-awaited return to the Lumines series from the
developer behind Tetris Effect.

Thursday, June 5 Diddly squat

There were absolutely no Summer Game Fest events scheduled on Thursday. We
assume that's out of respect for antipodean trees, as June 5 was Arbor Day in
New Zealand. (It's probably because everyone was playing Nintendo Switch 2.)

Friday, June 6 Summer Game Fest Live: Resident Evil Requiem, Stranger Than
Heaven and sequels abound

It's fair to say that previous Summer Game Fest opening night streams have
been… whelming at best. This year's showing was certainly an improvement,
not least because there were exponentially fewer mobile game and MMO ads
littering the presentation. Yes, folks tracking Gabe Newell's yacht were
disappointed that Half-Life 3 didn't show up, and the Silksong crowd remains
sad, alone and unloved, but there were nonetheless some huge announcements.

Perhaps the biggest of all was the "ninth" (Zero and Code Veronica erasure is
real) Resident Evil game. Resident Evil Requiem is said to be a tonal shift
compared to the last game, Resident Evil Village. Here's hoping it
reinvigorates the series in the same way Resident Evil VII did following the
disappointing 6.

We also heard more from Sega studio Ryu Ga Gotoku about Project Century,
which seems to be a 1943 take on the Yakuza series. It's now called Stranger
Than Heaven, and there's a (literally) jazzy new trailer for your
consideration.

Outside of those big swings, there were sequels to a bunch of mid-sized
games, like Atomic Heart, Code Vein and Mortal Shell, and a spiritual sequel
of sorts: Scott Pilgrim EX, a beat-em-up that takes the baton from the 2010
Ubisoft brawler Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game.

There were countless other announcements at the show, including:

Troy Baker is the big cheese in Mouse: P.I. for Hire

Here's a silly puppet boxing game you never knew you needed

Killer Inn turns Werewolf into a multiplayer action game

Out of Words is a cozy stop-motion co-op adventure from Epic Games

Lego Voyagers is a co-op puzzle game from the studio behind Builder's Journey

Mina the Hollower, from the makers of Shovel Knight, arrives on Halloween

Wu-Tang Clan's new game blends anime with Afro-surrealism

Day of the Devs: Snap & Grab, Blighted and Escape Academy II

As always, the kickoff show was followed by a Day of the Devs stream, which
focused on smaller projects and indie games. You can watch the full stream
here.

Escape Academy has been firmly on our best couch co-op games list for some
time, and now it's got a sequel on the way. Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School
takes the same basic co-op escape room fun and expands on it, moving away
from a level-select map screen and towards a fully 3D school campus for
players to explore. So long as the puzzles themselves are as fun as the
original, it seems like a winner.

Semblance studio Nyamakop is back with new jam called Relooted, a heist game
with a unique twist. As in the real world, museums in the West are full of
items plundered from African nations under colonialism. Unlike the real
world, in Relooted the colonial powers have signed a treaty to return these
items to their places of origin, but things aren't going to plan, as many
artifacts are finding their way into private collections. It's your job to
steal them back. The British Museum is quaking in its boots.

Here are some of the other games that caught our eye:

Snap & Grab is No Goblin's campy, photography-based heist game

Please, Watch the Artwork is a puzzle game with eerie paintings and a sad
clown

Bask in the grotesque pixel-art beauty of Neverway

Pocket Boss turns corporate data manipulation into a puzzle game

Tire Boy is a wacky open-world adventure game you can tread all over

The rest: Ball x Pit, Hitman and 007 First Light

After Day of the Devs came Devolver. Its Summer Game Fest show was a little
more muted than usual, focusing on a single game: Ball x Pit. It's the next
game from Kenny Sun, an indie developer who previously made the sleeper hit
Mr. Sun's Hatbox. Ball x Pit is being made by a team of more than half a
dozen devs, in contrast to Sun's mostly solo prior works. It looks like an
interesting mashup of Breakout and base-building mechanics, and there's a
demo on Steam available right now.

Then came IOI, the makers of Hitman, who put together a classic E3-style
cringefest, full of awkward pauses, ill-paced demos and repetitive trailers.
Honestly, as someone who's been watching game company presentations for two
decades or so, it was a nice moment of nostalgia.

Away from the marvel of a presenter trying to cope with everything going
wrong, the show did have some actual content, with an extended demo of the
new James Bond-themed Hitman mission, an announcement that Hitman is coming
to iOS and table tops, and a presentation on MindsEye, a game from former GTA
producer Leslie Benzies that IOI is publishing.

Saturday, June 7 Monument Valley 3, eggs, Camper Van: Make it Home and niche
streams

The Wholesome Direct arrived on Saturday, just in time to soothe that weird
hangover we all got after the IOI showcase. The Wholesome Direct is a
celebration of all things adorable, quaint, peaceful and sweet, and this year
included mainstream news about Monument Valley 3 coming to consoles and PC,
following a stint as a Netflix exclusive. There was also a release date
announcement for the cozy but twisted shop-management sim Discounty, which is
about as spooky as the Wholesome Direct ever gets. ThereΓÇÖs something
sinister about the small town in Discounty, and while weΓÇÖre still not sure
if itΓÇÖs demons or just the looming specter of capitalism, we know for sure
the game is coming to PC, Switch, PS4, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on August 21.

Meanwhile, Omelet You Cook hit Steam during the showcase as a nice little
surprise. ItΓÇÖs a game about making eggs for picky students in a cafeteria,
and of course pleasing Principal Clucker (who is a chicken in a suit, yes).
Simply put, it looks delicious. The final game we want to shout out from this
yearΓÇÖs Wholesome Direct is Camper Van: Make it Home, a perfect little
crossover of interior design mechanics and slightly miniaturized objects,
which makes for a super cute experience. It came out during the showcase, and
itΓÇÖs live now on Steam.

There were dozens of other announcements during the 2025 Wholesome Direct
stream, and the entire thing is worth a watch. You can do so at your leisure,
ideally cuddled up with a blanket and a nice drink, right here.

Saturday was also the time for all of the hyper-specific game streams to
shine. We saw the Women-led Games show, Latin American Games Showcase,
Southeast Asian Games Showcase, Green Games Showcase and Frosty Games Fest.
Party!

Sunday, June 8 A new Xbox handheld, Outer Worlds 2 and Black Ops 7

The last big event of the weekend was Xbox, which had its usual breathless
showcase. The major news, especially for a publication like Engadget, was the
ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, two new Xbox-focused PC handhelds.
Internally, they're a lot like ASUS' ROG Ally handhelds, but the grips have
been smoothed out to feel more like an Xbox controller in your hands.

The software experience is also different. The Xbox Ally handhelds run
Windows 11, but in Microsoft's version of Steam Big Picture mode there'll be
fewer background processes and… just a generally lower overhead compared to
regular Windows handhelds. Thankfully, Microsoft isn't locking things down,
as it'll be able to access other "popular storefronts," which we're taking to
mean Steam and Epic. The Xbox Ally will be available closer to the holidays,
but price is a huge question mark: The ROG Ally costs significantly more than
the Steam Deck and Switch 2. Is Microsoft going to subsidize these things, or
are they going to cost $600-$800 like ASUS' own-brand versions?

Side note: A quick screw you to Microsoft for using Hollow Knight: Silksong
to show off the new handheld. We're all starving out here, and this was not
helpful. I guess the news that it'll be playable on day one on the handheld
at least narrows down the release date to "between now and whenever this
thing comes out."

Less of a surprise was Outer Worlds 2, which Microsoft said would be at the
show well ahead of time. We got a release date ΓÇö October 29 ΓÇö and a deep
dive into the game's new systems. It looks like an expanded title compared to
the original, with an improved combat system and a more fleshed out set of
companions. We hope to have more on what's new real soon.

The One More Thing of the show was a new Call of Duty game, Black Ops 7.
Truly, when a game comes out every year is it really worth blowing your one
more thing on? If only Microsoft had an Xbox-branded handheld to show off,
that would've been a really cool note to end the show!

Here are the other bits and pieces worth reading about from the Xbox show:

ΓÇïΓÇïPersona 4 Revival is real and coming to PS5, PC and Xbox

At FateΓÇÖs End already looks like the must-play indie game of 2026

The new trailer for Clockwork Revolution is a wild, extremely steampunk ride

Psychonauts developerΓÇÖs trippy island adventure Keeper comes out on October
17

Beast of Reincarnation is a 'one-person, one-dog' RPG launching in 2026

Final Fantasy 16 suddenly arrives on Xbox Series X/S

Asobo Studio's next Plague Tale game is a prequel arriving in 2026

The rest: Paralives and Blippo+

Paralives has been in the works for what feels like forever, but you'll be
able to play it this year: It enters early access on December 8. The indie
take on The Sims looks charming as all hell in its latest trailer, and I
can't wait.

Blippo+ has been a great distraction since it launched with Playdate season
2, and we found out Sunday that it'll be coming to more platforms soon ΓÇö in
full color, no less! It'll arrive on PC and Nintendo Switch in fall 2025.

Monday, June 9

Now you're all caught up. There's just one event on Monday, and it's the
Black Voices in Gaming showcase. It starts at noon ET, and we've embedded the
steam below for your viewing pleasure.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/everything-ne...
handheld-resident-evil-requiem-and-more-185425578.html?src=rss

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