We felt it coming for a few days but it is now a reality, between withdrawal of Nintendo, Microsoft or Ubisoft. The great Californian video game rally, the mythical E3 which will have made millions of gamers dream in its heyday, will not take place this year. The show’s home page features this succinct message: “the organizer ReedPop announces that E3 will not be held as planned next June: all events on site or online are canceled. ReedPop and the ESA will reflect together on the future of E3“. In short, if the 2023 edition has already been forgotten, it’s a safe bet that the 2021 edition of E3 was the last. Because yes, E3 2022 had also been canceled in time.
Good times… And not so good ones.
Between sensational announcements, misleading trailers, surprise guests, monumental failures in mondovision and other concentrations of Cosplay, E3 has nevertheless been able to make people talk about it since its first edition in 1995. During this one, the announcement of the price of the first PlayStation (299 $ only when the competition posted a price bordering on 400 $) had represented a small earthquake and had already almost signed the death warrant of the Sega Saturn. Editors’ conferences have often been the occasion to whet the appetites of gamers with beautiful trailers, as was the case for Half Life 2 in 2003. Hopes sometimes showered by trailers far too impressive to be honest, as was that of KillZone 2 in 2005 that had nothing to do with the end result.
The various stages of E3 also welcomed major figures from the industry, such as Shigeru Miyamoto armed with the mythical Hylian shield and the Master Sword of Legend of Zelda during the presentation of Twilight Princess in 2004… A much more controlled intervention on the part of the Nintendo legend than the announcement of Wii Music during which his interpretation of the Mario theme on the WiiMote turned into a fiasco. Much more recently, it was Keanu Reeves who was invited by CD Projekt Red during a conference concerning Cyberpunk 2077.
A slow descent into hell.
Despite occasional jolts, E3 never really regained the enthusiasm of its beginnings and the craze of the years 2000-2010. With the advent of the Internet and online conferences, manufacturers have often preferred to take care of their own communication by organizing their own show-case at key times of the year and no longer just in mid-June. The behemoths of the sector (Nintendo, Microsoft – with the Xbox- brand and Sony – with PlayStation-) have gradually deserted the aisles of the Los Angeles Convention Center and the COVID pandemic in 2019 and 2020 did not help matters. . So we may have witnessed the coup de grace against E3 with the press release from ReedPop and the ESA.