Summer Game Fest organizer and journalist, Geoff Keighley, spoke about the ill-fated E3, which took place every June in Los Angeles and featured presentations from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Asked if he thought Summer Game Fest had anything to do with the collapse of E3, he said that “E3 kind of killed itself” and that he “built Summer Game Fest because I saw the wheels falling off the E3 wagon.” Keighley spoke about his personal feelings about the old E3, “It was so exciting and heartbreaking to see it start to fall apart.”
“I think E3 kind of killed itself,” Keighley replied. “I understand why people say [SGF killed E3]but I think we created Summer Game Fest, and I created Summer Game Fest because I saw the wheels fall off the E3 wagon.
“As someone who loves that time of year… for two decades, E3 has been a part of my life since I was 15 years old. [From] the first E3 in 1995, I went to every show. I loved it and it defined my summer.”
He added: “It was so exciting and heartbreaking to see it start to fall apart. I think they’ve had a relevance problem, and then they’ve had a participation problem over the last few years.
“So yeah, I think the question is, if we didn’t do the Summer Game Fest what would happen? I think things would just fall apart this summer.”