Xbox Announce Gamescom Show, Ahead Of ONL

It is August, which means two things: Every major game releasing this year comes out this month, and I start to hate Geoff Keighley once again. We’re just around the corner from this year’s European E3, or that is what it is quickly becoming. This year Gamescom is once again going fully digital.

In the announcement made Monday via the Xbox New Wire, it was announced the company will be doing their own show this year ahead of Gamescom. More importantly, it will also be ahead of Geoff Keighley’s now yearly (or bi-monthly) showcase, Opening Night Live. Starting at 10 AM Pacific, 1 PM Eastern, 6 PM BST, and 7 PM local to Cologne, on Tuesday, the 24th of August, Xbox will be streaming an entire showcase full of gameplay, updates, and the tease of announcements. Meanwhile, last week Keighley stated that Opening Night Live takes place on the 25th, though at 11 AM Pacific, 2 PM Eastern, 7 PM BST, and 8 PM local to Cologne.

3 weeks from today, get a new look at this holiday's biggest upcoming video games and what lies beyond…@gamescom Opening Night Live

A live two hour showcase

Streaming & Co-Streaming Everywhere
Wednesday, August 25
11 am PT / 2 pm ET / 8 pm CET pic.twitter.com/h8C12vtvri

— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) August 4, 2021

Of course, Keighley will host his event on Wednesday, while Parris Lilly and Kate Yeager will host the Xbox event on that Tuesday. As Microsoft made the announcement, they also noted the places you can catch the show on the company’s social media: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook Gaming, and Twitter. Alongside those, you will also be able to watch the event on regional platforms too. The press release mentioned Russian and Chinese platforms VK.com and Bilibili, respectively. I will admit, one small portion of me would make a passing comment on the lack of Mixer.

Through details at the moment are rather sparse. Microsoft also announced that with the lack of in-person events this year, they are still going ahead with a digital version of FanFest. You may remember everyone’s gaming uncle, Phil Spencer, making mention of this during E3 shows in recent years. It is usually an exclusively in-person event held at shows filled with sweepstakes and other PR guff. However, with this year’s Gamescom being fully digital, the event is moving to the Xbox social media outlets and elsewhere online, it seems.

Following both shows, Opening Night Live and the Xbox Gamescom stream, Bethesda Germany will also be doing several days of programming online. Hosted on the Bethesda Deutschland Twitch channel from August the 26th onward, there are very few days on this one entirely. One can assume that this show will be hosted in German, though it is not entirely stated.

This brings us back to the main show, as the folks at Microsoft once again show they are at least attempting to push accessibility everywhere they know-how. This year’s showcase at Gamescom will be broadcast online, of course. So the team plan to offer support for 30 languages at the show, already including Audio Description in English and American Sign Language by default. There is no word on what these 30 will be, but one can take a guess that major ones will be covered; German, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese… and so on. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Accessibility is nothing but a good thing. It doesn’t affect those who don’t need it, and it improves the experience of those who want it.