It’s that time of year, and State of Play is back on June 2 running 30 minutes from 6pm Eastern, 3pm Pacific – just a week and change ahead of the official unofficial not-E3 presentations begin on June 9. As with any State of Play, it could have just about anything, from your wildest dreams to nothing of note. Helping along this time is the knowledge that the show will “have some exciting reveals from our third-party partners.”
Your brain will immediately go to Square Enix, naturally, especially Final Fantasy 16 since game producer Naoki Yoshida said their next trailer was literally ready. Of course, that would also very easily have pride-of-place as Summer Game Fest a few days later, which is likely to have a wider audience. Then again, PlayStation has been the home of Final Fantasy for twenty-five years on the dot, at this point. The argument for Summer Game Fest is also true of every other game that would be likely to show up here.
Other third parties with bits and pieces we’d expect to show up include Capcom’s Street Fighter 6 and new Resident Evil 8 DLC or other games. Ubisoft are yet to announce their own show around not-E3, so there could be an Assassin’s Creed or finally the re-debut of Skull & Bones. There’s also the giga-indies like Hollow Knight: Silksong, clown makeup and all.
The only thing that really won’t be there is Microsoft or their attached studios – Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, and the like – as they have their own showcase 10 days later.
There’s no specific mention of first-party titles, though they do say there will be a “sneak peek at several games in development for PlayStation VR2.” Despite what it might suggest, it doesn’t take God of War Ragnarok (or other first parties) completely off the table, though certainly makes it less likely.
We’ll see on Thursday. Watch on Twitch or YouTube.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.