Ellie and Joel from The Last of Us video game of 2013.
Ellie and Joel from The Last of Us video game of 2013.
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The DeanBeat: The Summer Game Fest had no Elden Ring, but it still showed the vibrancy of gaming

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

You can’t beat what you did last time all of the time. And so while yesterday’s Summer Game Fest showed us a lot of good games, it couldn’t beat last year’s closing session with gameplay of Elden Ring.

It was a great show with dozens of announcements of upcoming games, and it was our best replacement for the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which canceled both its 65,000-person physical event normally held in Los Angeles as well as its digital show held last year. It is the best celebration of gaming this summer, at least until Gamescom comes in Europe in late August.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.