Video games lose one of their historic events. E3 will never have survived the pandemic, but also the transformations of video games.
He marked the lives of all the players every year in June. The Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3, known for a long time as the most important video game show in the world, will never open its doors again. The ESA, the organization responsible for organizing the show each year, confirmed to Washington Post that the event would not return.
A historic video game show
E3 was a very important show in the video game ecosystem. Historically, it was during this event at the beginning of June where we were able to discover future great successes in the industry like the Nintendo Revolution, which became the Wii at its launch, but also great failures, like the presentation of the Wii U from the manufacturer.
The show has also made and broken reputations. We can remember the famous Konami conference of 2010, the failed Sony conferences for the presentation of the PS3 in 2005 and 2006, or the very poor launch of the Xbox One for Microsoft. We easily remember the bad moments, but E3 was also great moments like the presentation of Final Fantasy VII Remake at Sony in front of a burning room, that of Metal Gear Solid 2 by Hideo Kojima or the teaser of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess by Nintendo in 2004.
However, we should not be mistaken in thinking only of the conferences of publishers and manufacturers. The show was above all a professional show where journalists could preview games still in development. It was also and above all a meeting place for the sector, a way for independent developers to meet a future publisher or to create a network. These are also the moments that disappear with the death of E3.
Video games have evolved beyond E3
The disappearance of E3 was caused by the Covid pandemic which led to the cancellation of many public events in 2020, but if the show never managed to make a comeback, we must wonder about the reasons . They are deeper and precede the pandemic. As recalled by Washington PostSony abandoned the show in 2018.
In 2023, it appears clear that the big players in the industry no longer wish to invest millions of dollars in a presence at a trade show when they can be satisfied with a presentation on Twitch accompanied by a more targeted marketing campaign.
There were fewer and fewer reasons for publishers, but also journalists, to finance a trip to cover E3. Today, video game news is constant and no longer really comes down to a few highlights in the month of June. Very recently, the Game Awards still allowed us to discover a number of new games coming in 2024 and 2025.
We can still expect to discover events dedicated to video games in June, such as the Xbox group Bethesda Activision Blizzard conference, or Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest conference, but these will now be simple events to follow online. The connection between professionals, developer interviews or publishing contracts will be done in other places such as the Game Developer Conference or Gamescom.