E3 is over, but Summer Game Fest is alive and well, with a live and livestreaming show on June 7 at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles.

Summer Game Fest 2024 is a "cross-platform live showcase of game announcements and trailers." Details on who will be attending and what will be shown have not yet been revealed, but as event founder and emcee Geoff Keighley says, the show will run for two hours and will be "a showcase for what's next in video games."

The excitement of the Summer Game Fest is remarkable. For nearly three decades, E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) was the preeminent video game showcase in North America and the one everyone wanted to see. However, its dominance began to wane in the mid-2010s due to a combination of rising costs, the growing popularity of live streaming, and the emergence of more consumer-focused events such as PAX and, of course, the Summer Game Fest.

The move toward public access failed to turn its fortunes around, major publishers began to decline, and the Covid-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 event altogether. 2021 saw an online E3, but 2022 was another failure, with the event's organizers promising a return in 2023, Organizers promised to bring it back in 2023, but that too was eventually cancelled. And at the end of 2023, E3 closed for good.

The Summer GameFest, while taking place around the same time E3 once did, is a very different kind of event, conceived from the outset as an intensive consumer-oriented exposition intended to burn directly into the eyeballs of gamers. as I was not able to attend, but read avidly about E3 in magazines and forums.

The Day of the Devs: SGF Edition, held immediately after Summer Game Fest, is a showcase of "over a dozen great games by game developers from a variety of backgrounds." Please clear your calendars for this day.

If you are planning to be in LA on this date and want to attend live, tickets will be available from Ticketmaster on May 7. Otherwise, you can watch the live streaming on the platform of your choice.