Victims of Nostalgia

Ironically, people watching online got a better
show due some audio issues in the actual venue

Well, the Summer Game Fest has concluded for 2022 and the general consensus seems to be that the future of video games looks a bit grim...or at the very least the show wasn't good.  Personally, I enjoyed it.  Being a fan of survival horror and media that blends sci-fi with horror probably had a lot to do with it.  Certainly, if you're not interested in those sorts of genres then I can see why you'd feel disappointment.  Having extended that metaphorical olive branch, I'm going to promptly discard it by saying I don't understand the "I miss E3" sentiment that is going around.

Before it's cancelation, the Electronics Entertainment Expo had been constantly terrible for a number of years.  Worse still, the people that hosted the event (the ESRB) are a bunch of amoral money grubbers who have long since abandoned any pretense of caring about the people who make games or gaming as an artform.  Their only goal is to milk the industry as much as they can even if that means endorsing loot boxes and pushing gambling on children.  Additionally, bringing back E3 isn't going to suddenly cause Sony and Nintendo to return.  The pandemic has wrecked developer timetables and made large public gatherings a significant health hazard.  All this is compounded by a generational shift in console hardware, something that typically creates a lull in terms of big-budget releases.

Conversely, the indie scene continues to thrive.  Summer Game Fest probably would have benefitted from mid-show montage of short clips taken from a bunch of these smaller games in order to increase the variety and quality of what they were presenting.  Talking with the flesh-and-blood creators of video games is always a welcome feature in my book, but I feel like it's the kind of thing that benefits from a more leisurely low-key format that one might find in an after-show segment.  

In Geoff Keighley the show host's defense, he did try to subdue they hype pre-show over social media by encouraging people to limit their expectations.  Still, it appears that a lot of viewers were expecting more than what they got.  As I stated earlier, it's understandable...but the folks who want E3 back really need to take off the rose colored glasses.