The End Of A Glorious Era, ESA Retires E3 Games Expo For Good
If you read that headline and thought, "wait, didn't it already die off?" then you're probably thinking of the fact that E3 hasn't had an in-person event since 2019. That's obviously due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the show was already having tough times before that. Sony elected to pull out of E3 in 2019, and many other vendors canceled their attendance not long after.
The end of in-person E3 marked the end of relevance for the show, so it's really no surprise that it has finally been canceled once and for all. Game companies were already transitioning to online demos and presentations even before the pandemic, with Nintendo leading the charge to direct marketing with its suitably-named "Nintendo Direct" livestreams.
Since publishers were already marketing directly to customers anyway, there's no need to formalize it in the shape of a virtual expo, so there's really no place for E3 anymore anyway. Sure, the ESA could try to revive the in-person aspect of the show, but budgets are tight these days, and companies clearly don't feel the need to pay out for travel and accommodations all for a few days of promotional coverage.
As convenient as it is for us tech and gaming journalists—E3 week was always chaotic, much as CES still is—having announcements spread out over the year does diminish the excitement that E3 could manifest. Anyone who was watching the industry back in 2005 will surely remember the ludicrous levels of hype achieved at that year's E3 show, where the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii were all shown for the first time.
The ESA's Stanley Pierre-Louis remarks that it created E3 in 1995 as a response to the way video games were marginalized at the Consumer Electronics Show. He says that E3 was originally meant to be a trade show for retailers to meet with game publishers, and that people outside the games industry didn't understand that it was more than just toys for kids, but rather "serious expressions of art and contributions to economic growth."
Over the years, E3 rapidly became bigger and bigger. Arguably, part of the problem with the E3 in-person show was the level of decadence that it had achieved. Live music shows with dancers, controversial booth babes, and questionable backroom dealings all contributed to the expense of the show, and one could make a salient argument that the industry is actually better off without the show.
With that said, the role of E3 in gaming culture has somewhat been subsumed into the two events hosted by Geoff Keighley: his Summer Game Fest in mid-year, and The Game Awards at the end, which, as demonstrated by the event last week, are arguably more about in premiering and promoting upcoming games than actually handing out awards and celebrating extant titles.
As Pierre-Louis says, "any one of these major companies can create an individual showcase." He points out that this is proof that the industry has grown large enough that a consolidated show is arguably no longer necessary. It still brings a wistful tear to our eyes thinking of days long past, though. Pour one out for E3, folks—there will probably never be another show like it.
