What's Happening With All Gaming Events Not Named E3?

All right, moving on to all of the not E3 events. And so right now it's just super fragmented. So here's what we had in June. PlayStation say to play on June 4th. Nintendo Switch to release on June 5th. Summer GameFest on June 6th. That was a busy week. Oh, Xbox Games Showcase on June 8th. Steam's NextFest actually happened as well. I think that was last week. And then June 18th is a Nintendo Direct that looks like it's mainly about the Donkey Kong game. This is a lot. This is a lot in the same time frame. It would be great if there was a little bit more kind of consolidation around it. But just on Summer GameFest itself, Jeff Keelley announced that 2025 was the most watched SGF to date. The live show had 50 million live streams, peak concurrent of 3 million, up 89% year onyear according to Steam charts. This doesn't make sense. What do you mean it doesn't make sense? Michigan, go ahead and take these numbers to town. 50 million live

streams, but only 3 million. Just to be clear, I was pretty impressed by these numbers, and they are very impressive numbers. So, I went to YouTube and I looked at how many streams the Summer GameFest 2025 4K 60fps has. gathered and it's incredibly impressive. It was 8.5 million at the point when I looked at it, you know, not 50 but 8.5. That's huge. That's amazing number. And I was a little bit surprised by the 50. I don't know which platforms are bringing those views because it's like over what six times what's being reported. I also have never watched Gamefest and I watched the summer GameFest and Oh, you haven't? No, no, I watched it for the first time and it's like it's a trailer porn. It's like trailer on trailer on trailer on trailer and then there's a bunch of couple of old dudes come in and talk, you know, a few words about the game and then trailer trailer and then a founder comes in and says something that is really rehearsed and kind of like clichéish and a little bit janky but kind of fun way. And then again trailer and people are

clapping with their like hands bleeding. They're just clapping more and and it felt there's a lot of like smaller games which is really cool that not the the a lot of games that you would see normally. But yeah, nevertheless, I digress. I I I don't understand where this 50 million comes from, but the number is incredibly impressive. 8.5 million views at least on the main one and then a lot smaller for the for the clips. Yeah. No, so your your question it's a fair question on on the number. So, this came up last year because Yoast from Super Yoso put a kind of a chart together and made an assumption kind of what you guys were doing was a 50 was on one channel at one time cuz I think his chart was against like the Super Bowl or against other major events. So, the way that they calculated, what they said last year was it's all the different kind of like streamers out there that are streaming it and having conversations on different streamer channels. So they went and like they have a way of like aggregating all of that. So it's not just through,

you know, one destination, it's all of it aggregated is the number they put out. And I believe a view on YouTube is 30 seconds for a live stream. At least 30 seconds of interrupted viewing. So that's a pretty low bar at the 8.5 for a three and a half hour stream. Well, a lot of it was on Twitch, too. So remember, like streaming happens on Twitch and then all of the other kind of, you know, platforms around the world. If you go viral on Tik Tok, they would add like 10 million. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes, it's also a trailer fest. I'm surprised you haven't seen it. I'm also surprised you didn't see the Muppets. Typically, the Muppets are are on there. I understand why it's so successful with a little bit of a younger audience cuz it's like non-stop. I'm an old guy. It's too much. It's like I can't take it. Well, you're not the audience anymore, dude. Yeah, I know. I know. And that's what I'm saying. I'm an old guy. I was like 10 minutes. I was already like I need to read the reviews on these ones. like there's too many things coming out my way like I need to I need to digest. Yeah. The point of it is all of these new announcements. The challenge for them is that they don't have a lot because everything is fragmented. There

wasn't as many like big announcements in SGF Summer GameFest because everyone is keeping things to themselves. So it's almost doing what E3 did back in the day is everyone used to be at E3. Then it's like well we want to do our own well we want to do our own event and so everyone's starting to kind of be spread out. way for smaller games to get a lot of visibility. That's what it is because like they can't do their own show and so now you can be part of this trailer fest to give him credit. That is something he focuses on which is trying to find underrepresented groups or indies to give them. I think he does some of that pro bono or really heavily discounted and then he obviously takes money from some of the bigger folks and that might also be why the bigger folks are are out. The only comment I have is that this these actually all these shows have replicated E3 relatively well online. Like it's actually, you know, you're getting the visibility into what's happening, but dynamics have changed significantly in terms of the type of content that they

can provide or the people that are participating. You know, like EA was like nowhere on this and take two barely, right? So, they're basically doing their own shows. But when you can get access to 50 million people regardless of how this is calculated, that's way broader than anything that E3 ever did. So yeah, I think that in some ways, even though I miss E3 tremendously, I think this a good Yeah, the the direct to consumer piece is really valuable, I think. And the media value behind paying to play to be a part of that for many people might be worth it, especially if you're not doing your own show. [Music]