After three years of on-again-off-again show announcements and cancellations, E3 has met its end.
E3, once known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo, launched in the mid-1990s as a trade show serving the video game industry. As video games became mainstream and the business moved into a more digital space that doesn’t rely on physical media, E3 faced challenges that became too hard to overcome.
Despite the event being regarded as the largest and most important show for the video games industry, its existence was a roller coaster ride of expansion and contraction with occasional venue moves, size changes, and an eventual blurring of the lines between trade and consumer attendance.
Ultimately, the final “boss level” proved to be the COVID-19 pandemic.
E3 had planned to rebrand its event as a “fan, media, and influencer festival” in 2020 (complete with The Pop Insider on board as a media partner) only to see those plans wiped out. The cancelation was followed by a virtual event in 2021, no show in 2022, and a 2023 plan for a relaunch in partnership with ReedPOP.
In March, the ESA and ReedPOP revealed that the 2023 edition of E3 was canceled and that the team was “reevaluating the future.”
This week, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) announced that it’s putting the final nail in the E3 coffin, issuing a note on social media signing off with “GGWP” (Good game, well played).
More than 66,000 attendees turned out for the last in-person E3 in 2019.
Meanwhile, the video game industry has played on with a larger presence at CES and Licensing Expo and a celebration in the form of The Game Awards which took place last week to immense success and trending conversation on X, formerly Twitter.
