Gaming🎮 Summer Game Fest isn’t yet the E3 replacement the industry needs - but it’s getting there

[Royal_Lizard]

E3 was a horrible, loud, expensive nightmare - but there was doubtlessly a magic about it. Thinking about it gives me a bloody headache, but it’s a nostalgic headache - and I will forever mourn that old, mad format. It ain’t ever coming back - but this week, I think we got a glimmer of what the future could and probably should look like.

I’ve just spent the week in Los Angeles attending ‘Summer Game Fest’, which in this article doesn’t just refer to the event that Geoff Keighley laid on, but all of the broader activities around LA. For the sake of argument, let’s call it ‘new E3’.

Keighley’s event is sort of the tentpole that draws others in, with LA this week a host to the SGF stage show and stream, the ‘Play Days’ campus where many publishers set up shop, a similar offering from our colleagues over at IGN Live, plus separate events spaces from Ubisoft and Xbox. Other publishers camped up in hotel rooms for top-secret hands-ons and the like.

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