Last weekend saw EGX (Previously Eurogamer Expo) 2023 return to London’s Excel Centre, bringing a range of demos, events, tournaments and various attractions for the UK’s gaming audience. Taking over several halls of the convention centre, EGX 2023 brought dozens of developers, publishers, retailers and all sorts of companies and groups involved in different aspects of the gaming industry. With a focus on providing a variety of experiences, split into several defined ‘zones’ EGX 2023 featured many different aspects of gaming for all sorts of fans to enjoy.
One of the main things people go to conventions like EGX for is to play new and upcoming games, and the some of the bigger booths were from companies like Sega (Sonic Superstars, Persona 5 Tactica, Persona 3 Reload, Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth & Like A Dragon Gaiden : The Man Who Erased His Name), Nintendo (Super Mario Bros. Wonder) and Call of Duty Modern Warfare III presented by Omen & Hyper X. While these big titles were attracting a lot of attention, the majority of games on show at EGX were from much smaller companies and indie developers, mainly found in the ‘Rezzed Zone’. Here, dozens of smaller devs and publishers had a wide selection of different games, most of them demoed on PC, with some games already available to buy and others coming out in the coming months ahead. Surrounding the Rezzed Zone were a few more areas featuring games from indie devs with more unique aspects to them, like those on show in the ‘Leftfield Collection’ and games that were designed to be played with interesting and unusual control methods in the ‘Custom Controller Room’. Following the long hiatus for EGX Rezzed, the smaller EGX event that would usually be focused around PC Gaming and Indie devs, it seems that the ‘Rezzed Zone’ and connected parts have now become a significant part of the main EGX event instead.
Elsewhere on the show floor, you could find the Retro Zone which housed an almost exhaustive collection of Retro home consoles, ranging from the instantly recognisable like the Nintendo Entertainment System, to exotic foreign console platforms like NEC PC-FX and the rare and unusual consoles like the Nuon DVD Game console. Among the different sides of the Retro Zone, was a central area housing several retro multiplayer gaming setups like 007 Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 and a 16 player Halo : Combat Evolved LAN setup on original Xbox consoles. Following the Retro gaming theme, the Arcade Zone was right next to the Retro Zone, lining up some of the classic Arcade machines from the 80s and 90s.
For fans of fighting games, the EGX Arena hosted live tournaments throughout the event weekend for Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 7, with open signups so anyone who thinks they would have a chance at winning would be able to compete.
This year’s event seemed to have less of a focus on big, noticeable games from the main publishers everyone knows of and instead tries to bring together different corners of gaming into one place. If someone was coming here simply as a place to play the big budget AAA games before they’re released, they may find the selection of those types of games a little sparse, but otherwise, it could be a good place to try out some of the unknown and unusual games from smaller companies, or take part in some of the community events going on and explore the different zones to expand your gaming horizons.