Geoff Keighley doesn’t think the Summer Game Fest killed E3: “E3 sort of killed itself in a way”

This summer is marked by the definitive cancellation of E3, after announcing that it would return this time, and by the consolidation of Summer Game Fest (this Thursday), the event organized by Geoff Keighley. The showman rejects the blame for having ended with the Los Angeles fair, assuring that it is the E3 itself the only responsible for its end, who knows if definitive.

“I think E3 sort of killed itself in a way,” Keighley says emphatically. “I understand why people say [I killed E3], but I think if anything, we created Summer Game Fest, and I built Summer Game Fest because I saw the wheels falling off the wagon of E3. “E3 was part of my life since I was a 15-year-old kid. “[From] the first E3 in 1995, I went to every show. I loved it and it defined my summer.”

“[E3] was so exciting to me, and it was heartbreaking to see that start to fall apart,” he continues. “I think they had a relevancy problem, and then they also had a participation problem over the final years. Yeah, I think the question is, if we didn’t do Summer Game Fest what would happen? I think things would have just kind of really splintered apart this summer.”

Full screen

Two major events were planned

It was last March when the ESA decided to cancel E3 2023 for good, after the big companies had fallen out. Of course, many people linked this cancellation to the fact that the same companies confirmed their presence at Summer Game Fest, something Keighley flatly denies.

“I get the sentiment around it,” he explains. “It was sad to me that we had to decide to go off and build something new, but we did that all in partnership with the publishers, and our list of partners for Summer Game Fest did not change at all with the cancellation of E3 this year.″

“Everyone we’ve been working with, we’ve been working with for months around Summer Game Fest. So there was a world where Summer Game Fest and E3 would have co-existed,” he continues. “We had talked a lot to [E3 organizer] ReedPop about that possibility, because they were focused much more on a big trade event, and consumer event, and that’s not what we were doing with Summer Game Fest.”

Source | VGC