It seems that the high mass of video games that is E3 is definitely starting its swan song…
After a turbulent period during the coronavirus pandemic and the 2022 and 2023 editions purely and simply cancelled, recent developments lead us to believe that this major show held in Los Angeles every summer is now a thing of the past.
A page in the history of video games that turns for good?
It’s safe to say that E3 has definitely fallen victim to the long COVID. A major gathering of video games since 1995 using the Los Angeles Convention Center as a theater of operations, its last real traditional edition in physics was held, remember, in 2019.
The coronavirus pandemic then hit, making it completely impossible to hold a show of this magnitude. The 2020 edition was therefore canceled, and a catch-up was attempted in an exclusively digital version in 2021. Since then, total silence on the part of the organizer of the event, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).
Unfortunately, it would seem that this dead silence will not be broken anytime soon. The Los Angeles Department of Tourism has indeed shared a calendar of events expected in the coming years. Regarding those expected at the Los Angeles Convention Center, we note on the document cited in source below a particularly meaningful annotation: “ Cancellations of E3 in 2024 and 2025 “. The event would thus have lost its historic theater of operations for the next two years… and beyond?
The king is dead, long live the king?
In all likelihood, the cancellation of the next two editions of the show comes from a decision by the ESA. This, however, split a statement indicating ” be in discussion with association members and other interested parties regarding E3 2024 and beyond “. She goes on to say that ” no final decision about upcoming events has been made yet “.
It should however be remembered that this refrain had already been served to us for the 2023 edition, which was finally cancelled. Blame it on a lack of interest from industry giants like PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox, who have since understood that it is in their interest (especially financial) to organize showcases on their own terms.
Especially since, the place having been vacant for a few years for the big video game meeting of the summer, a certain Geoff Keighley took the opportunity to install the Summer Game Fest as the new “non-E3”. The man has thus built up a solid address book and uses his program as a simple platform for rebroadcasting the events of other players in the industry. This format seems more suited to today’s habits and customs with regard to the broadcast of live events.
Time will tell if the ESA still has some unsuspected cards up its sleeve when it comes to E3, though. Hope gives life, after all, even if one cannot help thinking that it is on this point too late for the largest and most permanent video game fair in history.
Source : Los Angeles Department of Tourism
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