For the third year in a row, E3, the world’s largest video game fair, will not be held in physical form in June 2022. If health uncertainty is once again the reason officially cited, the real cause could be much deeper .
Do you remember that annual meeting that made gamers wriggle, what we called “the high mass of video games”, where industry players from all walks of life met in Los Angeles for a week? crammed with announcements and unveiling of new games? We wouldn’t blame you if your memories started to fade. The last time that E3 was held face-to-face in its usual theater at the Los Angeles Convention Center, it was in June 2019. Then the health crisis arrived and got the better of the 2020 and 2021 editions. ‘one could hope that 2022 would be the year of the great return of E3, it will not be: the organizers of the show have just announced that they will still not risk orchestrating a physical gathering this year.
“Due to the health risks associated with the Covid-19 pandemic and the potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and visitors, E3 will not be held in physical in 2022”, explains the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), promoter of the event, in a press release sent to the VentureBeat site. In favor of an online iteration? Maybe, but without any certainty at the moment. Asked about the subject, the association remains vague and simply says “Excited about the possibility of an online event”.
The future of E3 in question?
Would ESA have been cooled by the experience of the CES in Las Vegas, which was keen to maintain itself, despite the spread of the Omicron variant, and for this attracted very many criticisms – not to mention the sad images of desperately sparse spans, due to the defection of many participants? It’s possible. However, according to a few generally well-informed figures, the health crisis could be just a bogus excuse.
Specifically, American author and economic analyst Mike Futter says to have learned in mid-November 2021, even before the appearance of the Omicron variant, that ESA had not reserved its dates at the Los Angeles Convention Center for the month of June 2022. It must be said that E3 was undermined in more than one respect by the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, the cancellation of its two previous physical editions did not prevent publishers from continuing to communicate very effectively, by means of online distribution for example, the production of which is infinitely less expensive than a presence at the Internet. ‘E3 – partly because it does not require the payment of participation fees to ESA. We can therefore imagine that it was above all the emergence of this new model that sealed the fate, perhaps definitively, of E3 in its historical form – and this, even though the ESA obviously said “Incredibly excited about the future of E3”.
Geoff Keighley and his Summer Game Fest in ambush
Either way, the media space left vacant by the physical salon is not lost on everyone. Just seconds after ESA’s announcement, this Thursday, January 6, 2022, the inescapable Geoff Keighley, former journalist converted into showman industry, confirmed the return of its Summer Game Fest, which will offer publishers to bring together under a common banner all their major online events that will punctuate the summer of 2022. To believe that Keighley also knew for a long time date what would be the fate of E3 …
– Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) January 6, 2022