Summer Game Fest starts on June 9th – and it’s coming to IMAX

Summer Game Fest have announced the show will be back for the third time on June 9th to beam Geoff Keighley straight into your peepholes. Proceedings kick off at 11am PST/2pm EST/7pm BST/8pm CEST and are streamed live from Los Angeles across YouTube, Twitch and other platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Weirdly, but sort of awesomely, Summer Game Fest 2022 will be screening in IMAX cinemas in the UK, United States and Canada. Tickets go on sale from May 12th. It’ll be odd seeing Geoff up on the silver screen, but I’m hoping it’ll be a bit like when he turned up as a hologram in Death Stranding. Apparently, The Game Awards in December will also be shown on IMAX screens.

Even though live digital events are convenient to watch wherever you might be sat – rocking chair in the attic, natch – I’m up for seeing this kind of thing with an audience around me, tucking into popcorn and smuggled-in sweets. After the past few years it’s enjoyable to be back in public experiencing things in a group of strangers again. There aren’t many summer blockbusters anymore either, so why not stage broadcasts of gaming shows if the cinemas are unoccupied?

Indie showcase Day Of The Devs: Summer Game Fest Edition will be back too, organized by Double Fine and iam8bit. This year is the tenth anniversary of Day Of The Devs, which highlighted Axiom Verge 2, Last Stop and Death’s Door in 2021. Over the past decade, more than 500 games have been showcased by Day Of The Devs, including Disco Elysium, Untitled Goose Game and RPS fave game of 2021 Unpacking.

Last year’s Summer Game Fest showed off footage of Elden Ring for the first time, which has kind of been a big deal since it launched, and announced Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. The festival has shuffled into E3’s slot in June in recent years. Of course, this year there’s no E3 at all anymore because the digital event was canceled in March. The lack of E3 doesn’t trouble me too much, I’m fine with Summer Game Fest’s drawn-out schedule, but nostalgia means I’d still rather see E3 return in some form next June.

Summer Game Fest 2022 begins on June 9th. You can probably expect some Hideo Kojima to boot, so maybe keep an eye on the Summer Game Fest site. More info on this year’s Day of the Devs can be found here.