{"id":58878,"date":"2026-06-07T23:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T15:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=58878"},"modified":"2026-06-07T23:12:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T15:12:00","slug":"summer-game-fest-tried-to-replace-e3-but-the-game-awards-did-it-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=58878","title":{"rendered":"Summer Game Fest tried to replace E3, but The Game Awards did it better"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Patch Notes<\/strong> is a weekly newsletter bringing you the best of Polygon, sent on Fridays and published on the site on Sundays. You can <\/em>subscribe here<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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In 2020, Geoff Keighley smelled blood in the water. The Game Awards impresario had often worked as a host for E3, the video game industry’s biggest trade show, but in early 2020 he announced he wouldn’t be participating that year. Keighley said he had concerns about the direction the show was heading in \u2014 toward being an influencer-focused festival with more members of the public in attendance. His concerns were shared by big exhibitors like Sony. What they didn’t say outright was that the new format for E3 smelled of desperation.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n

In the event, E3’s death throes were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2020 show was canceled, and E3 never really came back: there was a dreadful virtual event format in 2021, and a couple more false starts. Keighley saw this coming, and as early as 2020 started spinning up his proposed alternative, Summer Game Fest, focused on online trailer showcases but with a small in-person component for press.<\/p>\n

Summer Game Fest has stuck, and is now the name most everyone uses to refer to the vestigial ghost of E3 that the game community refuses to relinquish: a week in June stuffed with announcements and previews, a shop window for the industry, and a hype fest for fans. But Summer Game Fest isn’t really the new E3. By its nature, it can’t be. What’s more, when it comes to all-encompassing game showcases, Keighley is his own biggest competition.<\/p>\n

The issues are twofold. Keighley has kept a flag planted in June in a way many in the industry find useful, but he’s the only real stakeholder in Summer Game Fest (as opposed to E3, which was organized by industry body the Entertainment Software Association). Everyone else will serve their own best interests, notably the Big Three platform holders \u2014 PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo. And the Big Three have all decided that they like making announcements close to each other, but not too <\/em>close.<\/p>\n

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\"Game\n <\/picture>Illustration: Vy Pham for Polygon<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The center cannot hold. Sony typically presents its June State of Play a few days before the Summer Game Fest stream, Xbox a few days after, and Nintendo usually goes later in the month. Nominally, none of them have anything to do with Summer Game Fest, and they hold both it and each other at arm’s length (unlike the breathless 36-hour rush of E3 press conferences in the old days). They also keep all the best stuff for themselves, including the biggest announcements from third-party publishers. The actual Summer Game Fest stream can never muster quite the same wattage, and the effect of the whole thing is dissipated.<\/p>\n

The second issue is that the starkest current contrast with this rather diffuse hype-fest is organized by Keighley himself. The Game Awards began in 2014, but Keighley had been involved in many of its precursors; with determination and focus, he has built it into a fixture of the game industry’s year. Taking place in December \u2014 exactly as far away from June as it’s possible to get \u2014 The Game Awards owns its spot in the calendar completely. It’s the only show that can rival the Big Three’s showcases for the impact of its announcements; indeed, all three of them often take part.<\/p>\n

It’s simply not possible to do something this monumental in June. The legacy of E3 has been carved up. Keighley has done well to grab himself a slice of it, but he’s not the only one, and the result feels less than the sum of its parts \u2014 especially when you stack it up against the E3 competitor Keighley already built at the other end of the year.<\/p>\n

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\"ac77c0ffa02b542704e0dac0cb89a42eeb1e9641\"<\/p>\n

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\t\t\tEvery big announcement from PlayStation\u2019s June State of Play<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n

Austin Manchester runs it down, from Wolverine to God of War Laufey<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\"Wolverine<\/p>\n

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\t\t\tSeptember 2026 has way too many new video games trying to escape GTA 6<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n

Giovanni Colantonio looks at his calendar and is afraid<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\"Laufey<\/p>\n

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\t\t\tGod of War Laufey has already become a culture war disaster<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n

Ari Notis dons his hazmat suit and wades into the Discourse<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\n Plus this:
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\"Mary<\/p>\n

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\t\t\tBackrooms director Kane Parsons answers three very specific questions about the movie<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n

Tasha Robinson quizzes the 20-year-old mastermind of the smash hit film<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Patch Notes is a weekly newsletter bringing you the best of Polygon, sent on Fridays and published on the site on Sundays. You can subscribe…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[21,306,258,10424,847],"class_list":["post-58878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-awards","tag-fest","tag-game","tag-replace","tag-summer","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}