Beloved video game event E3, which fell victim to the pandemic (and didn't make sense for roughly half a decade prior to COVID anyway) may have passed to greener fields for this year, but video game hypeman Geoff Keighley is here to save the day. In an interview hosted by Epic Games, Keighley says that while E3's 2022 cancellation surprised some in the industry, he was hard at work putting together the next iteration of his Summer Game Fest event.
While SGF can't replace the physical intimacy of E3 — both for better and worse — it can serve as a repository for all sorts of splashy video game announcements.
Better, faster, stronger —
Keighley seems to imply that the success of SGF 2021 was part of why the ESA (the video game industry body that puts on E3) decided not to do a digital show this year. "Sometimes it's almost better to not do something than to do something that's suboptimal," Keighley says.
Keighley also said that he expects major gaming companies to throw fewer standalone events themselves, and will instead throw their hats in with first-party events hosted by platform holders like Microsoft or Sony. In this way, the industry will resemble the pre-pandemic press conferences that E3 made famous.
Hype beasts —
The presenter cites the addition of live in-person events in major metro areas, where interested fans and developers can watch the event together in a "decentralized way." He also says that the U.S.-based nature of E3 led to some global developers being shut out of the event, and that SGF will help rectify that.
Summer Game Fest 2022 will run from June 9 at 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT to June 12. No word yet on if E3 will rise from its grave and challenge it to a duel for the throne.
