Summer Game Fest host Geoff Keighley at The Game Awards in 2019. | Photo by JC Olivera/Getty Images
Summer Game Fest is back again in 2023 with its first-ever in-person kickoff show on June 8th, which just so happens to be a few days before E3’s big return.
For the past three years, Summer Game Fest has served as the gaming industry’s big June blowout while E3 has been in flux due to the pandemic. E3 hasn’t happened as a big in-person event for quite a while; it was canceled in 2020, held as a series of remote events in 2021, and canceled again in 2022. In its place, Summer Game Fest became one of the biggest virtual events of the June gaming season. (In 2021, it was where we saw the first gameplay trailer of Elden Ring.)
This year, both Summer Game Fest and E3 are back with major in-person components in the Los Angeles area, setting…