Now that Microsoft and Sony have held their recent game showcases, Electronic Arts is next with its EA Play Live event on Thursday, June 18.
Each June, EA holds its annual Play Live event around the E3 gaming conference to announce new titles. The company usually uses the event to showcase gameplay in upcoming titles, and occasionally offers up some surprises. It could follow the same plan this time around.
EA had initially planned to hold its Play Live event on June 11 but postponed it by a week earlier this month following the tragic death of George Floyd and subsequent protests against racial injustice. In a tweet announcing the change, EA said there were “important conversations taking place and important voices being heard around the world,” and said it was “moving our time to come together in play” because of that.
EA Play Live 2020 is set to premiere in just a few short hours. Read on to find out how to watch the event, as well as what to expect from this year’s show.
EA will hold its Play Live event at 4 p.m. PT on Thursday. The company will livestream the show on YouTube and elsewhere. Even if you miss it, don’t worry — in the past, EA has made livestream replays available, so players could go back and see what was announced.
EA plans to post the livestream to its Play Live webpage. The company has also created a YouTube page for livestreaming and will likely showcase the event on Twitch. You can also watch a livestream that Digital Trends has planned during the event by revisiting the site at 4 p.m. PT.
There will be no shortage of games at EA’s Play Live event.
After EA unveiled Star Wars: Squadrons on Monday, the company said that it will reveal actual gameplay footage at Play Live. Squadrons, which will be available on October 2, promises space-based dogfighting and the ability for players to work together to take down “flagships” in multiplayer modes.
EA is also planning to showcase in-game footage for FIFA 21, and although it announced Madden NFL 21 this week, it said it will share more details on the game at its livestream. And if you’re hoping to see what the future holds for Apex Legends, EA has already said it will reveal “what’s next” in that franchise.
EA isn’t planning to ignore the next-generation console cycle at its show. The company didn’t say anything about specific titles planned for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but it did say in a Madden NFL 21 announcement this week that it will announce “more news on the next generation.”
As much as we know about EA’s plans, there’s much more we don’t know.
One of the biggest questions surrounding Thursday’s show is whether EA will talk about its plans for Battlefield 6. EA has said very little about the upcoming first-person shooter, which is slated for a 2021 launch, but recent leaks have suggested it will be set in a modern-day setting. And those same leaks indicate it might be discussed at least briefly at Play Live.
While Mass Effect has lost some of its luster in recent years, a recent GameReactor report said EA is planning a Mass Effect Trilogy remaster that could debut in the fall. The game, according to the report, could be announced at the show.
Finally, and perhaps most intriguingly, EA could use the show to discuss the Nintendo Switch. The publisher hasn’t heavily supported the Switch in the past but said in a recent earnings call that it’s considering expanding that support in 2020 and beyond.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.