Of course, E3 2022 didn’t take place. Instead, we held the third annual Geoff Keighley Summer Game Festival and a number of connected and unconnected streams and events from gaming publishers and media. play other. Although we had a weekend full of games on display and more than enough to cover, there’s something about the current setup for the gaming industry’s largest corpus of information of the year that frustrates and displeases me. I found myself lacking the tight encapsulation of excitement that E3 used to deliver.
What I would like to see coming back next year is the attempt to cram all the big summer industry news into a week or a time frame close to it. It would be better if these events could be combined in a common venue. We’ve had a good seven days of events, press conferences, and catwalks providing all sorts of information for the next five games and more. It’s often a mess to include even when everyone shares a conference floor, but for fans of the game, E3 week is a consistent and structured time where I know the news. about the game going to happen and when it’s over, I know that it’s up to Gamescom. E3 week feels important and is the essential view. In some ways, the spread of events has softened the impact of the most important time of year for gaming.
My problem with the current event structure is that we’re in the third week of summer events and it looks like we’ve only seen 1/3 of the announcements. Whatever we call this fake E3 is going on too long. We’ve got big rollouts from third-party PlayStation partners, Summer Game Fest, Xbox, and other streams focused on indie games and lesser-known titles. The puzzle feels incomplete even when the events are over hours and done with. Sony’s main rollout hasn’t taken place, Nintendo’s much-anticipated Direct is yet to make it to our calendars, and major publishers like Ubisoft, EA, Bandai Namco, and various Embracer franchises are barely showing up. currently or still has upcoming events.
Just to be clear, I’m not in favor of everything being rerun through ESA; That organization’s flagship show has been canceled multiple times because of the global pandemic. At this point, most major publishers are major media organizations and can handle when and where to showcase their games. Just looking at what crater E3 is and taking parts from it worked. Bring multiple industries together in one place and share what everyone is up to for a week or so. Keeping it short and exaggerated so we can get on with our summer and not have to worry about events going on for weeks.
