Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest is almost upon us, and the big show will air later today, Friday 7th June. As usual, gamers can expect to see a cavalcade of game trailers, announcements, and all the raucous excitement of an industry live show, such as the time that one kid managed to get on stage with FromSoftware. As the de-facto replacement for E3, Keighley's show is now big business and a new report has outlined what kind of prices prospective developers have to fork out for ad time on the main stage.
The piece from Esquire entitled "Is Summer Game Fest the Best Thing to Happen to Gaming - or the Worst?" was just published, and it provides all kinds of juicy information about the event, according to "multiple marketing professionals". The report alleges the going price for Keighley to show a trailer at SGF will run you: "$250,000 for 1 minute, $350,000 for 1.5 minutes, $450,000 for 2 minutes, and $550,000 for 2.5 minutes. If you add up all of the 1-to-2.5-minute trailers aired during last year's Summer Game Fest, those price levels could translate into $9.65 million." Esquire understands that this year's pricing scheme aligns with last year's ad time request for The Game Awards.
While that might seem like a lot of money to many consumers, what's quite interesting is that Esquire spoke to PR pros during its reporting. They said that "these trailer premieres are worth the spend" but noted that "the current pricing tiers make Summer Game Fest an unattainable goal for most indie developers and publishers".
Kotaku did some additional digging and found that not every trailer comes at a cost. Big reveals from companies like Sony are apparently played for free, and a select number of "free slots" are reserved for "earned editorial placements" and are provided to smaller non-AAA games and studios.