Summer Game Fest made two big changes to the 2026 GOTY race

Fable out, Ocarina in

In summary: not that much. Although we do have one major new entrant and one significant withdrawal.

There are a couple of reasons for this low impact. It used to be that you wouldn't really know what the second half of a year in video game releases would look like until you got to E3 in June. These days, during the weeklong round of online showcases that cluster around Summer Game Fest, it's not quite the same. With the slightly dissipated energy of the current summer showcase round, publishers are often happy to mark their spots on the calendar a little earlier. The major reveals of the PlayStation and Xbox showcases, as well as the Summer Game Fest show itself, were all focused on 2027 games this year.

This lack of movement in the calendar is exacerbated by 2026's elephant in the room: Grand Theft Auto 6. The Rockstar game's release date was set in stone back in November, putting pressure on other publishers, and giving them a clear marker to maneuver around. Many of GTA 6's potential GOTY rivals, like Marvel's Wolverine and The Blood of Dawnwalker, chose to stake their claim for dates outside the industry's self-imposed GTA exclusion zone earlier in the year.

Also, GTA's position late in the year — just days before The Game Awards' eligibility cutoff date — has discouraged any attempt from other publishers to try to sneak late-breaking games in under the wire. Several, including the companies behind Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, Stranger Than Heaven, and Metro 2039, have opted for January and February 2027 instead.

Here's where our notable dropout comes. Fable was, perhaps, the likeliest game to upset GTA 6's carefully ordered apple cart this year. It's a fascinating unknown quantity: a reboot of a beloved franchise, from a developer (Forza Horizon's Playground Games) with a great track record but working outside its usual genre, and with an ambitious premise that could be revolutionary or just so much hot air. But Xbox decided to move it to February 2026 to get out of GTA 6's way. The 2026 GOTY race just lost its most interesting wild card.

Thank goodness for Nintendo. The Japanese company is perhaps the last that still enjoys maintaining a sense of mystery about its upcoming release schedule (much to its shareholders' chagrin). Nintendo announced one game that is sure to play a part in the 2026 GOTY race, albeit an unpredictable one: the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Zelda is an awards favorite, and Ocarina of Time is a canonical classic. But The Game Awards doesn't always recognize remasters and remakes — the exceptions being Capcom's bold new versions of Resident Evil 2 and 4. If Nintendo can make Ocarina feel similarly fresh while honoring its spirit — a tall order — it will be there to challenge GTA at the final stretch.

Nothing else Nintendo showed is likely to disturb the GOTY race, although several of the surprise announcements in its showcase — like Nintendo Switch Sports Resort and Final Fantasy Resonance — are good bets for the genre categories. The Nintendo Direct also showcased a couple of indie multiplayer games that were already known about, but looked like they could do very well in awards season: retro anime co-op game Orbitals and friendslop adventure Big Walk.

The other showcases didn't even provide many dark horses that might make an impact on the fringes of the race. Silent Hill Townfall looks as though it might make a splash. But Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy seemed to be too much of a departure from a series that has been GOTY-nominated before.

In terms of 2026 games, Summer Game Fest offered few surprises. Mostly, the week was marked by established front-runners solidifying their case with impressive showings: Control Resonant in particular, but also Wolverine and The Blood of Dawnwalker. Zelda aside, there was no sense of disruption in the GOTY race.

For that you can blame the deadening effect of Grand Theft Auto 6, sitting there on the finish line, sucking up all the oxygen. Rockstar's game is not unbeatable; the developer has been thwarted before, by the likes of God of War and The Last of Us. But everyone else is behaving as if it is. And the most likely disruptor in Game of the Year 2026 is still the unthinkable, increasingly unlikely, but definitely not impossible chance of a GTA 6 delay. Exit cat; pigeons proceed to fight each other to the death. That would be something, wouldn't it?