Covid dealt the fatal blow to E3, known as the “Christmas of video games,” where video game companies presented their most impactful titles.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo, once the largest and most prestigious video game show, has been permanently canceled.
By Tuesday, the convention’s online page was almost completely empty, unless it said, “After more than two decades of E3, each one bigger than the last, the time has come to say goodbye. Thank you for the memories. “
E3, known as the “Christmas of video games,” began in 1995 in Los Angeles. The message ended with “GGWP,” an acronym for “Good Game, Well Done” used as a friendly signature after a game in a video game. .
The coronavirus pandemic dealt a fatal blow to the conference, forcing an outright cancellation in 2020, an online-only event in 2021, and a few other blanket cancellations in 2022. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which organized the event, had planned to return to an in-person E3 in 2023, but ultimately abandoned the occasion and did not offer an online alternative.
E3, where the biggest video game companies once showed off their most impressive titles and trailers, has been in decline for years as more gaming companies turned to streaming their own events to make major announcements.
Nintendo did so in 2011, skipping E3 to stream its own keynote, and Sony announced it would sign up for its Playstation console in 2018.
Years earlier, on the other hand, E3 was the center of the video game universe: Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all unveiled new consoles at the expo in a single year.
The shift mirrors a transition away from in-person purchases of video games to online downloads.
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“We know it’s hard to say goodbye to such a beloved event, but it’s the right thing to do given the new opportunities our industry has to succeed among enthusiasts and partners,” ESA President and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis told The Washington Post. Any one of those giant corporations can create an individual storefront. . . It’s exciting for our industry and means it’s an opportunity for them to explore how to engage with new audiences in other ways. “
The conference attempted to reignite interest in 2017 with an open invitation to the public. Around 66,000 people attended in 2019, the last in-person edition of E3. Previously, the conference required attendees to demonstrate a connection to the video game industry, thus maintaining an air of exclusivity.