{"id":60257,"date":"2026-06-12T23:19:56","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T15:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=60257"},"modified":"2026-06-12T23:19:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T15:19:56","slug":"the-only-forever-game-on-show-this-summer-was-halo-combat-evolved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=60257","title":{"rendered":"The Only Forever Game on Show This Summer Was Halo: Combat Evolved"},"content":{"rendered":"


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It was striking to see actor Ben Starr stride out onto the Summer Game Fest stage at the weekend to give a double-thumbs up in support of Fortnite – though perhaps not for the reasons Epic would have liked. For many years, the battle royale has been the Polaris that CEOs and shareholders have steered their ships towards, representing the promise of steady success and a ready audience built around a single game. That daydream curdled in the post-pandemic era, when Fortnite became the focal point of metaverse mania: a grand philosophy for digital shopping malls that inspired gabbled essays from executives, yet failed to coalesce into anything tangible.<\/p>\n

Now the money which fuelled that movement has been funnelled into the next pipedream that end users don\u2019t particularly want: large-language models. And the games industry is in the midst of a painful contraction that has seen studios collapse left and right. Among the most shocking headlines was the news that Epic was laying off 1,000 employees<\/u> after a significant downturn in Fortnite engagement. \u201cWe\u2019ve had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season,\u201d Tim Sweeney told staff at the time.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s telling, then, that Epic is now leaning on the Starr power of an actor made famous by his roles in two single-player RPGs – Final Fantasy 16 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The worm has turned, and solo experiences are proving to be a more dominant cultural force in games than many publishers had reckoned with. Today, Fortnite is feeding on that force to bring extra attention to its content machine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has all been building to this moment,\u201d Starr said of the in-game Shattered event that kicked off in Fortnite on Friday. But it\u2019s fair to say that even the most successful live-service developers have struggled to deliver satisfying story conclusions while constantly stringing players along with new activities. Arguably the greatest mistake Bungie made with Destiny 2 was putting out The Final Shape, a well-loved expansion which tied off many long-running plot threads and offered players a natural stepping off point. The game never recovered, and is soon to enter life support after its final major update<\/u>.<\/p>\n

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Throughout last week\u2019s Summer Game Fest show, other live-service announcements were notable largely by their absence. Those that did appear were, in the main, ancient survivors of the MMO wars that followed the launch of World of Warcraft. Jagex was there with Dragonwilds, the survival spinoff from RuneScape which portrayed players chopping down trees and hacking at rocks – just as they did a quarter of a century ago while leeching off their parents\u2019 credit cards.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the announcement of Guild Wars 3 relied on old memories to stir up enthusiasm. ArenaNet showed little – a craggy climb, a brief ride through a field on the back of a horned, luminous beast – but promised the \u201cnext evolution of the MMORPG\u201d, a genre it believes has “stagnated”. That might resonate with those who remember what Guild Wars 2 did for the genre: freeing up quests from dialogue boxes while allowing players to stumble across battles and events dynamically. But it rather makes a mockery of the millions upon millions spent in pursuit of new live-service franchises this past decade – much of it exclusively papering the cutting room floor.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re looking at a different sort of forever game: the classic single-player story that keeps on coming back.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

The last few years of publisher cutbacks have smothered a number of new studios in the crib. Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi is facing the likely closure of his company<\/u>, for instance, despite Gang of Dragon\u2019s reveal at last year\u2019s Game Awards. Those new studios that have survived appear to be making clearly scoped games with a beginning and an end. One example is That\u2019s No Moon\u2019s Crossfire: a third-person shooter with an impressively malleable cover mechanic revealed at SGF.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, more established studios are pivoting away from live-service. Remedy – who, fun fact, put out its own Crossfire shooter<\/u> a few years back – was represented at SGF by Control Resonant, which melds an architecturally-impossible Manhattan with mind-bending mystery. The developer\u2019s own live-service effort, FBC: Firebreak, has already been put to bed<\/u> just a year after launch. <\/p>\n

The latest Nintendo Direct told much the same story. Rayman Legends Retold offers couch co-op only, while the Vampire Survivors take on battle royale maxes out at eight players – a rebuttal to the steep server-filling demands of the genre that dominated charts just half a decade ago. DayZ and Final Fantasy 14 made appearances too – but there were no apparent successors jostling for their crowns.<\/p>\n

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Nintendo Direct June 2026 Games<\/h3>\n

Every game featured in the Nintendo Direct on June 9, 2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

See All