G4, the defunct cable television network that featured tech, gaming, and entertainment programming, is apparently returning in some form in 2021, according to a teaser posted by IGN during Comic-Con@Home, the online replacement for San Diego Comic-Con 2020.
The official Twitter accounts for Attack of the Show! and X-Play, G4’s best-known shows, also posted the teaser along with a tagline: “We never stopped playing.” The only other activity currently visible on those accounts is retweets of tweets from 2012.
The teaser contains few details on the way in which the TV network and/or its signature programming would return. In the one-minute video, a camera pans through a dark warehouse until it comes upon a game of Pong being played on a CRT television. The TV’s screen glitches and displays the words “incoming transmission,” before the camera flies through a very 2009-era animation of zooming through internet wires that eventually resolves to the G4 logo. The year 2021 appears on the screen, followed by the aforementioned tagline.
G4 was a television network that launched in 2002 and shuttered in 2014. Among video game fans, it’s probably best known for shows like X-Play (originally hosted by Adam Sessler, who expressed apparent surprise at Friday’s announcement) and Attack of the Show!, a live pop culture and review show with a collection of funny hosts. Olivia Munn, one of the show’s former hosts, also retweeted the G4 teaser video.
G4 was most recently owned by Comcast subsidiary NBCUniversal. It’s possible that the network could return as part of Peacock, the streaming service that the company fully launched last week. We’ve reached out to NBCUniversal for comment, and we’ll update this article with any information we receive.
