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Summer Game Fest is back, but is it better? We drop by to see how Play Days 2023 has evolved

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Maybe kicking off with Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown did it, but not even a cameo from Nicolas Cage was enough to re-energise Summer Game Fest after that first premiere. Despite a lot of hooting and hollering, the two-hour show – held at LA’s YouTube Theater – felt curiously flat, and of the 40-plus games featured, only a few came as a surprise.

While prior shows stood in E3’s long-established shadow, in 2023 SGF stepped (reluctantly, we’re assured) across the event’s grave. It took until March and Ubisoft’s exit for the ESA to publicly withdraw E3, and since then all eyes have been on Geoff Keighley and co. Yes, comparisons are inevitable. No, not all of them are fair. But the ESA had been slow to acclimatise to an industry revising not just its development schedules but its relationship with its communities, and it was SGF which picked up the dropped ball.