The End of E3
Can we please get an ‘F’ In the chat for E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo?
Since 1995, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, has been the place to learn about the latest and greatest news in video games. Every year, the big names in the gaming industry, reporters, and eventually fans gathered in LA to celebrate video games and look at what came next. As the years went by and video games grew in popularity, so did the E3. By the 2010s, the expo had established itself as one of the big expo’s of the year.
For years, E3 was the place to make all the biggest announcements regarding the video game industry. It’s where Nintendo gave us a formal introduction to the Wii. The first E3 was where Sony gave us the price for the original PlayStation. Keanu Reeves walked up onstage in 2019 to announce he was part of the upcoming game Cyberpunk 2077. Granted, the launch for that game became infamous, but it was still an awesome moment.
The bottom line is that the E3 was a big deal. With video games becoming widely accepted by the public, it became a big deal when news about it came out. Alas, like all the greats, E3 is gone too soon. Earlier this week on Twitter, the E3 account dropped this simple statement:
And the entire Internet mourned. However, this outcome might have been inevitable.
The Beginning of the End
It started with the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020. Thanks to that virus, the entire world ground to a halt. For more than a year, people couldn’t go out in large numbers without fear of spreading the virus. As a result, many big events had to either be cancelled or closed off to the public, and E3 was no exception. Then 2021 rolled around, and while things started to get better, the Pandemic was still a major problem. Thus, the people who organized E3 decided to make it a virtual event. It proved to be a poorly received disaster, with many saying it lacked the spark of years past.
The next blow came when it was revealed that E3 2022 was also cancelled due to COVID Concerns. Worse, the organizers also announced that they wouldn’t even host another virtual event. But the final nail in the coffin came in January 2023, when the Big Three of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft announced they’d be skipping E3 this year. Even Ubisoft and Sega pulled out. With so many developers and companies gone, the entire event was cancelled once more.
COVID Only Sped up The Process
In short: E3’s passing was not a sudden thing. It was a slow death that took place over the past three years. Things beyond its control rendered the big event in the world of gaming into a shadow of its former self. However, and I know I might get flak for this, E3 might have already been doomed to end sooner or later.
In recent years, many gaming industry giants have taken to alternative means to announce their next big works. Nintendo started doing its Nintendo Direct series, which would generally end up trending on YouTube. Ubisoft had its own live showcase. Sony and Microsoft also got in on that action. Thanks to YouTube and Twitch, companies can reach out to more people at once than they could do before. In addition, The Game Awards have, in recent years, become another hot place for businesses to show off their upcoming products, as was the case with the most recent one. With all of these factors working against it, was it only a matter of time before E3 was disbanded altogether?
Unfortunately, I fear the answer might have been yes. COVID-19 just sped up the process.
Regardless of whether it was needed anymore, people still loved E3. It was a big part of gaming culture for almost three decades, and it’s hard to see that go out with a whimper. The official tweet from the E3 Account has numerous online celebrities and companies mourning the passing of the expo. While The Game Awards might pick up where E3 left off, the gaming world will never be the same.
