Summer of Gaming 2023 Predictions Revisited

After Nintendo’s remake-packed Direct on June 21, and Sega’s Sonic Central on June 23, it seems like the majority of the events we’ve tucked into our Summer of Gaming season are now complete. After we covered more than 528 games over the course of 25 livestreams, and saw 137.5 million YouTube views and 336 million minutes (that’s 639 years) of IGN coverage watched during the past four weeks, it’s time to look back on those predictions from a few weeks ago to see if my dumb ideas were actually any good. 

I made 21 predictions in total, and I got 12 of them right. That’s not quite as good as I’d hoped, but considering how weird and unpredictable things have been around game releases over the past few years, it’s actually not too bad. Let’s go through them one by one.

I wasn’t exactly stretching on this one, so it doesn’t really count. But it’s good to open with a win. The game looks phenomenal, and will surely be the juggernaut that both Microsoft and the Xbox fanbase really need it to be. The biggest question after the show was: why is it 30fps on Xbox Series X and Series S and not 60fps, as people expect from truly next-gen games? In his IGN Performance preview after the event, Michael Thompson dove into the details shared by Bethesda, the revealed PC minimum and recommended specifications. He also looks at how the Creation Engine 2 works, comparing it to Bethesda’s previous games to gauge potential reasons for why the team might have chosen 30fps.

• Microsoft will lean hard into Forza Motorsport, and it’ll go out of its way to show how much prettier and even-more unnecessarily attentive to detail it is than Gran Turismo. See the individual carbon fibers, or something. However long the segment of their showcase is, people will complain that it’s too long.

Similarly predictable, but honestly they kept the really nerdy shit to a minimum, which was uncommonly reserved. What we did learn was that a lot of work has been done to make the career gameplay more interesting with the potentially-groundbreaking new Builders Cup career mode, which serves as the new single-player campaign. The Forza team calls it a “spiritual successor” to modes from Forza Motorsport 3 and 4, and promises more of an RPG-style progression system where driving skill directly impacts XP leveling. 

• I think there’ll be a Gears 6 teaser with little to no gameplay shown. I know this isn’t exactly that bold of a guess, but it’s time. It’s not a stretch to assume there’s a Master Chief Collection-style Gears bundle in the works too.

Well, that didn’t quite work out. To be fair, I was hardly the only one predicting this. Ryan had this one on his list on Unlocked, too. What’s interesting is that the Xbox Showcase (actually, both of them) projected a renewed confidence from Microsoft, despite a significant number of previously announced games like State of Decay 3, or highly-likely titles like Gears 6 not being present.

Much as we’ve seen in movies and TV, game studios are now looking at their own back catalogs as sources of raw material to reimagine from scratch, rather than continue or simply just remake.

• All the glitter-inspired fuss about Playground Games’ Fable reboot will turn out to be true. I’m guessing it’s way further along than anyone thinks, and we may even get a release date.

Nailed it. We didn’t get a release date, but we did get a beautiful demonstration of how the story is being reimagined by Playground, plus a wonderful use of Richard Ayoade to demonstrate the team’s commitment to humor. If you were expecting something that built fully on the foundation of Lionhead’s original, it seems like this one is moving much further afield and reimaging the franchise. This is a good example of a trend that seems to be emerging pretty quickly these days – much as we’ve seen in movies and TV, game studios are now looking at their own back catalogs as sources of raw material to reimagine from scratch, rather than continue or simply just remake.

Side note: In the poll I ran last time, this was by far the most popular choice of games listed that people were looking forward to. It took 34% of the votes.

• This one’s probably obvious after Phil Spencer made such a point of saying he’s played it a bunch, but there’ll be a big segment on Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity-expanding first person RPG Avowed.

Yup. They showed it twice, in fact. After the main showcase the reaction definitely seemed a bit mixed as the overall tone of the thing seemed to throw a lot of people, plus there was widespread criticism of it looking less than beautiful. The studio has since revealed that although it was first announced three years ago, the game is far from being finished and won’t be released until 2024. Obsidian boss Feargus Urquhart has also said that while the studio’s initial pitch for Avowed was for it to be a bigger, sprawling open-world fantasy role-playing game like Bethesda’s Skyrim, it has ended up being a smaller scale game, similar to its previous sci-fi role-playing game The Outer Worlds. 

• We’re about due a longer and even weirder Death Stranding 2 trailer.

I honestly thought this was a sure thing, but nope. In keeping with the general air of unpredictability around anything Death Standing related, the only thing we saw during this period of time was Kojima talking about the Directors Cut of Death Stranding running on Mac as part of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on June 5.

• We’ll certainly see more from Ubisoft on Assassin’s Creed Mirage, but I think we’ll learn that it’s just the sneaky stealth-focused amuse-bouche before the real main course: whatever it is that Codename Red is going to be called. I think we’ll get the name for the game and a reveal showing that it’s a gigantic RPG-style thing that’s even bigger than Valhalla.

Yes to Mirage, but no to Codename Red. Yes – Mirage definitely appears to be a smaller, more compact, stealth-focused assassination game rather than a huge sprawling RPG like Valhalla. Unexpectedly, we also got a look at Jade – the Ubisoft and Level Infinite team-up that looks like it has the potential to be a fully-fledged Assassin’s Creed game for mobile. We also got a trailer for the Assassin’s Creed VR game, Nexus, but the trailer for it was completely and utterly fake pre-rendered nonsense and not at all what a Meta Quest 3 will be able to generate, let alone a Quest 2.

• The only whiff of anything that smells even vaguely like an acknowledgement of a new Splinter Cell will be in anything Ubisoft shows of XDefiant.

We did get to see more XDefiant 6v6 arena gameplay, and the game does feature Echelon agents as one of its factions – so I guess this is kinda, technically a yes? The game is in open beta right now, and will be out later this year.

• Ubisoft will show Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in all its glory. The comments on every platform will basically be yawns and claims of not giving a shit, and then we’ll see that the trailer has done a gajillion views in the first 12 hours.

Yes, and it’s Far Cry: Pandora, basically. It didn’t do the crazy views I thought it might though, the trailer only did around 80k views on our YouTube channel, which is pretty weak, and then the longer gameplay overview managed about 120k. Previous announcements around the game have performed considerably better than that, but that was mainly before the second movie came out.

• If you’re hoping there’ll be anything on Beyond Good & Evil 2, you’re just stressing yourself out. We’re all going to have to let it go.

Yeah. C’mon. It’s never happening.

• Ubisoft’s megaton will be its Star Wars reveal. There are all sorts of rumors going around about this one, but my favorite is that it’s a Mandalorian game. Not based on the show, but on The Purge that’s often referenced. Various flavors of wishful thinking have it as an Assassin’s Creed-alike with space flight and combat in-between planets.

Yes to Star Wars, no to the Mandalorian part. That still counts as a win though, right? Technically Star Wars Outlaws is more of a Watch Dogs-alike than an Assassin’s Creed-alike, but given the two are pretty closely related anyway, I think that still counts. For me personally, along with Starfield, this is the announcement from Summer of Gaming I’m most excited about. I know a lot of people have criticized recent Ubisoft games (Valhalla in particular) for being too big and too sprawling with just too much stuff in them – but I honestly hope that Outlaws is exactly like that. Valhalla became a comfort game for me, and the nearly-200 hours I spent in it was ultimately due to exploring every nook and cranny and collecting every doodad I could possibly find, so the idea of something similar in a familiar Star Wars setting sounds wonderful.

• We already know the gameplay reveal of Mortal Kombat 1 will be at Summer Game Fest thanks to Geoff Keighley’s frequent reminders, so we can safely file this one under “expectations.”

Yup. You all seemed to love it, too. When we posted the trailer it saw over a million views very quickly and got some of the most positive feedback of anything we saw over the course of the entire event. This is another example of the trend we’re seeing where franchises are being revisited and reimagined to some degree. While Mortal Kombat 1 doesn’t seem to be rethinking the core gameplay of the 30 year-old franchise too much, the fact that the story is being completely rebooted is indicative of the trend we’re seeing where publishers are clinging to old brands and trying to make them fresh again.

• Warner Bros. Games used Summer Game Fest to show Gotham Knights last year, so it’s possible it may use this year’s event to show something redemptive for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The game isn’t due until next February, but its last showing definitely soured a lot of people to it, so there’s an opportunity for recovery.

Not even the tiniest whiff of it. It seems unlikely we’ll see anything of this until maybe the Game Awards in December. If I’m honest, I’d guess it may get delayed even further and we may not see it til this time next year. Or even later.

• I think we’ll see a new Sonic game at Summer Game Fest. I have no evidence to back this up, I’m just guessing. This may end up being little more than a trailer for the Frontiers DLC featuring playable Tails, Amy, and Knuckles, but I honestly think there’ll be something more than that.

Sonic Superstars looked fantastic, and the ability for four people to play through the story together as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy Rose definitely differentiates it from the dozens of other Sonic games we’ve seen over the years.

• Sega will show a new Hyenas trailer because everyone has forgotten that the game exists.

Maybe we all just imagined Hyenas, and it was never actually real?

• We’re well overdue for a new update on the many Silent Hills, particularly Silent Hill 2. Time for a new trailer, surely?

Nothing. Not a sausage. Kinda surprised about this one, as it seems well overdue, plus Konami seems to be waking up again with all the Metal Gear Solid stuff.

There’s been an assumption that Phantom Blade Zero is a PlayStation 5 exclusive – however, it isn’t.

• Phantom Blade Zero will surely pop up again. After wowing everyone at the PlayStation Showcase, first-time studio S-Game’s tough-to-describe steampunk kung fu maybe-soulslike action RPG was an early surprise that we’ll hopefully see much more of.

I honestly thought this would show up all over the place, because it looked amazing. Interestingly, because the game was shown as part of the PlayStation Showcase on May 24, there’s been an assumption that Phantom Blade Zero is a PlayStation 5 exclusive – however, it isn’t. According to a developer Q&A posted on the game’s official Discord server, the team states that “for now we don’t have any exclusivity on any platform.” To be clear, only PS5 and PC versions have been announced so far.

• Lies of P emerged at Gamescom last August under similar circumstances – a trailer during a showcase that wowed everyone with its gritty visuals and soulslike gameplay. Round8 debuted at Opening Night Live at Gamescom – which is hosted and curated by Keighley – so it seems like a fairly safe bet we’ll see a follow-up at Summer Game Fest. At the very least we’ll get an actual release date.

Yup, and it looked dreamy in all its puffy-shirted Timothée Chalamet-looking gothic glory, plus we got both a release date and a demo.

• There hasn’t been a Warhammer 40k game announcement in the last five minutes, so there’ll probably be one of those.

They showed Space Marine 2, which wasn’t exactly an announcement because they first showed it at the Game Awards in December, so to the letter of this prediction, I was wrong. But still – the game looked pretty awesome, and the trailer revealed showed that the game has a co-op mode. If you’re wanting to get a new, vaguely Gears of War-ish fix before the end of this year – it seems to have that covered.

• Capcom will probably continue down its path of regurgitating itself with the announcement of another remake. The divisive Code Veronica, perhaps? (Yeah, yeah, I know they said last October that they weren’t doing it right now, but do you really believe them?)

Nope, nope, nope. They only showed stuff we already knew about, and then their “deep dive” on Dragon’s Dogma 2 was barely puddle-deep. A big disappointment all round.

• We’ll get our first glimpse of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. I’m guessing at Summer Game Fest.

Nope. We got Warzone Season 3, but not Modern Warfare 3. It was probably a stretch given what we’re learning from the FTC trial going on at the moment.

Overall, it was a good, solid preview season with some really cool-looking games coming in the next 12 months or so. It may not have been the most groundbreaking or surprising set of announcements, but I think the real takeaway from all this can be broken down into seven basic themes.

1. We all still expect big summer showcases and previews, and even without E3 or something large-scale to hold everything together – June is still an important month for us all to see what the future of game releases looks like. Even though E3 is cancelled for the next couple of years (at least) it seems clear we’ll continue to see big events every year.
2. After three years of studios hedging and releasing games across previous and current generation platforms, we’re finally getting to see true next-gen experiences.
3. We’re definitely seeing parallels with TV and movies where studios are not only remaking well-known and beloved games, but we’re also seeing things being rebooted from the beginning and reimagined as something slightly different.
4. The next 12 months is absolutely packed with games. We saw 528 titles during Summer of Gaming, and while many of those were indies, the volume of big-budget titles was considerably greater than we’ve seen in recent years.
5. Our time is more precious than ever. Games are getting bigger and requiring more of a commitment, the choice on subscription services is getting broader, DLC is getting bigger (Phantom Liberty looks huge), and service games are more of a time-suck than ever.
6. The hardware has really settled down. You can more easily buy a PS5 or an Xbox Series X, there are no iterations on the horizon – and in fact the only hardware announcements all year have been VR and AR related.
7. This year is shaping up to be one of the biggest years ever for releases. After the huge successes of Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo IV, and Hogwarts – we’re looking at a super-packed September and October with games like Mortal Kombat 1, Starfield, Alan Wake 2, Spider-Man 2, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

John Davison is IGN’s publisher and editorial lead, and has been writing about games and entertainment for more than 30 years. Follow him on Twitter.