After it was canceled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, there were naturally questions about whether E3 would, or even should, come back for 2021. While the answer has turned out to be yes, with the ESA choosing to make it a digital event (something it attempted to do last year), there may be more attention on the Summer Game Fest, which will also be making a return this year.
At the time of the announcement, Games Award host Geoff Keighley confirmed in a private message to VGC that he would not be returning to E3 again, having quit the show last year due to disagreements on its direction. At first, it was suspected that Keighley would instead host the Summer Game Fest, which he himself organized last year, and Keighley has confirmed that that is the case.
The official Twitter account for Summer Game Fest posted a tweet with the comment "New year. New colors," sporting a new profile picture and banner of the event's logo. Judging by some of the responses, there seem to be people who are far more excited for the Summer Game Fest than E3, despite the latter being the biggest gaming event of the year and being far more established.
However, there are plenty of people who have grown tired or disillusioned with E3 over the years, including big publishers like Sony, who chose to skip E3 entirely in recent years. The ESA accidentally leaking the personal information of thousands of attendees certainly didn't help either.
That being said, while the Summer Game Fest managed to rope in several major developers and publishers to help make it feel like a decent E3 replacement, there are those who feel that the event was somewhat disorganized. In a response on Twitter, Keighley appeared to acknowledge this, chalking it up to another result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Another Twitter user asked Keighley if it was possible for the event to be condensed to just a week so they could take time off work to catch all the announcements. Last year, the event lasted for several months, which some found to be rather overwhelming and difficult to manage, be they a fan wanting to tune in for the announcements or a journalist trying to cover it all. Keighley most assuredly seems aware of this and, while he didn't provide a time frame, he said that he is looking into making it more condensed this time around.
It's obviously too early to tell what can be expected from the event, since it's not known which developers and publishers will be in attendance. Despite last year being its inaugural event, it had some major reveals, such as a hands-on demonstration of the PlayStation 5's DualSense controller and the announcement of Crash Bandicoot 4.
Source: VGC