read from esquire:
“E3 was usually dominated by Nintendo, PlayStation, and Microsoft, but Summer Game Fest and [its in-person media event] Play Days have opened the floor for so many more creatives and developers to participate,” says Jasmine James, a senior PR account manager at ÜberStrategist, which represents studios as large as Bungie (
Destiny 2) and as small as Serious Bros. (
Imagine Earth). Participating studios in this year’s Summer Game Fest include heavyweights like Bandai Namco (
Elden Ring), Epic Games (
Fortnite), Sega, and Ubisoft, which are willing to pay a premium for the gaming equivalent of a Super Bowl commercial.
“These shows are really ****ing expensive,” one insider says, referring to both Summer Game Fest and the Game Awards. According to pricing details shared with me by multiple marketing professionals who requested anonymity, running a trailer during Summer Game Fest’s main show this year cost $250,000 for one minute, $350,000 for one and a half minutes, $450,000 for two minutes, and $550,000 for two and a half minutes. They also say that last year’s edition of the Game Awards featured the same pricing tiers.
If you add up all of the one- to two-and-a-half-minute trailers aired during last year’s Summer Game Fest, those price levels could translate into a $9.65 million haul for the main show alone. Of course, last year’s prices may have been different, and I don’t know how to account for shorter, 30-second trailers, nor the longer segments in which Keighley invites a developer onstage.
For many smaller and independent studios, these sums are astronomical—sometimes far more than their entire marketing budget for an individual game. “The current pricing tiers make Summer Game Fest an unattainable goal for most indie developers and publishers,” a PR professional who represents indie games told me. But several marketing and PR folks at larger studios say these trailer premieres are worth the spend. “As far as general brand awareness, the impact is pretty huge,” one of them says. “The caveat here is that it depends on the placement and trailer length. Longer slots perform better and seem to drive more coverage, whereas short trailers don’t capture quite the same attention.”
Another marketing professional I spoke with pointed to the fact that this year, Summer Game Fest is also selling tickets for fans to attend the main showcase in the YouTube Theater, saying, “That’s another stream of revenue for Geoff, so … could he then lower the cost of entry for smaller clients to be featured in the main show?” Earlier this week, first-party tickets were still available for $41 on Ticketmaster. But even if Summer Game Fest sold out the theater’s entire 6,000-seat capacity at that price, it would net only around $246,000—less than it makes from a single one-minute trailer—and the true number will likely be far lower thanks to seats reserved for invitees.
However, Summer Game Fest is more than just Geoff Keighley’s live stream. “I appreciate Summer Game Fest a lot more outside of the main presentation,” says
Ash Parrish, a video game reporter at the Verge who attended the Play Days media event in 2022 and is heading back to Summer Game Fest this year. “The most memorable games I’ve played—the kinds of games that remind me why I love my job—are the ones that don’t often get the huge spotlight of the big stage and are part of the smaller presentations like
Day of the Devs,” she says, referring to Summer Game Fest’s indie-only aftershow.
Speaking of Play Days, it’s a three-day “invite-only media and influencer event” where studios can purchase a “full hands-on pod” for $150,000 or a “meeting cabana” for $50,000 this year. “I fell in love with games I would have never considered, like
A Little to the Left, Time Flies, Escape Academy, and
Schism, just by walking around [and] getting hands-on with demos and talking to the developers,” Parrish says.
Attending this in-person event is free for invited members of the media, but some of them wish Summer Game Fest was a little more transparent with access. “A lot of upcoming journalists and creators ask me how they can get invited,” says
Danny Peña, founder and cohost of the Gamertag Radio podcast, who’s attended Summer Game Fest in the past. “When I first started out, I went straight to the official E3 website and applied for a media badge, but I’ve never seen anything like that for Summer Game Fest,” he says.
