It took a long time to arrive. Gaming industry observers have wondered about the screen length since PlayStation first retired in 2019. That same year, E3 leaked a document containing the addresses and phone numbers of industry screen-goers, misleading much of the gaming industry. In hindsight, those occasions were the first in a series of dominoes that culminated in today’s cancellation, when the COVID-19 pandemic dealt a mortal blow to the exhibit.
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Earlier this year, Rebekah Valentine and I announced the cancellation of E3. The conversations we had leading up to this report painted a picture of an exhibition plagued by a lack of logistical expertise and waning interest from major publishers. Behind the scenes, publishers have complained about the maximum charge for running a booth at the exhibition, which can cost millions of dollars. The Entertainment Software Association, the lobbying organization that ran the exhibition, described it as “out of touch” with the evolution of the video game industry.
“The E3 arms race for the biggest, loudest booth has led to a backlog of budgets that is increasingly difficult to justify,” Chris Kramer, Tencent’s head of communications for North America, told IGN. “One year at E3, the head of one company pulled me out of our booth to show me another company’s monitor, expressing his displeasure that the other company’s screen was bigger and brighter than ours. The following year, the occasion team had to spend money on renting a recently retired Jumbotron from an NFL stadium to make this executive happy. How do you track the return on investment (ROI) of a booth of between 5 and 20 million dollars that only exists for 3 days and is seen by 20,000 to 30,000 people?
Kramer praised Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest Play Days, calling them “a much more civilized way to introduce new titles to gaming media” and saying they’re a “fraction of the burden of E3. “Another well-informed industry observer says E3 has had “a complicated transition” into the current era.
“As consumers began to adopt virtual formats, the need for a retail display for distributors decreased. Along with the already popular fan displays like PAX, E3 has become the kind of prohibitively expensive exhibition that tried to spend too much time to become a fan-inclusive event. “, they explain. This eventually dropped out when major record labels followed a direct-to-consumer virtual showcase event, saving them a lot of money. COVID was the final nail in the coffin, but from what I just saw and what I know from my colleagues, I had already struggled for years to find my place.
In fact, E3 had had its percentage of ups and downs over the years. When I was first introduced to the media in 2009, E3 was coming out of a depressing two-year era as the “E3 Business and Media Summit,” and the 2007 showcase took place. in an old hangar in Santa Monica. Journalists and developers commonly hated it. IGN co-founder Peer Schneider recalls that the exhibit is chaotic, adding, “The traffic in Los Angeles is real. “
The return to the larger format helped to repair some of the lost enthusiasm and, in the years since, it is the most important industry event of the calendar year.
At its peak, E3 was a grueling but exciting demonstration of the industry’s excesses. Clever functionality can keep a publisher going for months, while poor functionality can potentially drown a game under an onslaught of memes and bad press. When Nintendo chose to pull out of E3 in 2013 and stream its own livestreams, the narrative was that it was becoming obsolete. However, as is the case, Nintendo was ahead of the curve.
What industry observers didn’t realize at the time was that the way we consume games was already changing. If there’s one thing that’s not unusual in the conversations I’ve had since the announcement of E3’s death, it’s that he’s stubbornly stuck to a format that seemed outdated. Its big innovation was letting enthusiasts in in 2017, leading to overcrowding and security issues. Sony’s decision to pull out of the exhibition in 2019 further affected the prestige of E3, leading other publishers to question whether the head of attending was worth it in the streaming era.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and physical events were cancelled, ESA was not prepared to adapt. A tepid virtual show in 2021 was followed by a total cancellation in 2022. Meanwhile, IGN has heard many rumors that ESA simply lacks the expertise to host a large-scale event like E3, with former ESA senior director of communications Dan Hewitt considered one of the main promoters of the event. Hewitt left for Gearbox in 2019, but showed IGN in a post that he was the head of E3 from 2007 to 2019.
“There was a significant change in ESA’s control around 2019; the other people who came here didn’t seem to realize the importance of the show, despite the profits it generated for the organization,” Kramer said. “The ESA completely abandoned the ball in 2020 and 2021. . . then withdrew in the face of the surprising crisis that its collaboration with ReedPop for 23. When the ESA attempted to provide a playing face after this year’s failure, it became clear that their poor control of the E3 logo had well killed it.
ESA’s lack of in-house expertise led it to outsource the display to ReedPop, who reveled in managing displays like PAX and MCM Comic Con [Disclosure: I’m a former ReedPop employee and ran USgamer from 2017 to 2020]. For others in the industry, one of the most important court cases was over E3’s lack of identity. It was meant to be an industry showcase, a business hub, an exhibition for enthusiasts, and a showcase for new games, leading to a tortured format. combining all these elements. ReedPop’s solution was to create separate E3 business days that would be reserved for industry members, with Gamer Days taking place in a separate component of the conference center.
First of all, many publishers agreed with this new approach, with Nintendo of America being one of those who would be in charge of making the plans for the series. But as the months passed and the main points didn’t materialize, the editors became nervous. Nintendo pulled out of the series, later saying it was “not compatible with our plans. “Editors complained in the scenes that ReedPop wasn’t transparent enough. ReedPop was frustrated by the gaming industry’s reluctance to compromise. In March, it became clear that E3 2023 would be a struggle. Shortly after, ESA took it offline.
Immediately afterward, ESA President and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis attributed the cancellation of the series to “economic headwinds” and other issues, saying at the time, “First, a number of corporations have reported that the game’s progression schedule has been replaced from the start. “Second, economic headwinds have caused several companies to reevaluate how they invest in primary marketing events. And third, companies are starting to experiment with how to find the right balance between in-person events and virtual marketing opportunities.
Guy Blomberg, who at the time was E3’s director of commercial progression and since then director of events for Dreamhack Festivals North America, is more positive about this.
“Everyone had a vision of what E3 deserves to be: how similar it deserves to be to what it was before, how much it deserves to change, whether it deserves to be industry-focused or consumer-oriented, digital, how to collaborate with other people like Geoff or IGN, etc. ,” says Blomberg. I think we had some wonderful concepts that would have made it applicable again, but in hindsight, relaunching it was probably a no-win situation, it’s a logo that desires the enthusiasm of the industry it represents, and that submission had obviously failed. . “
After E3 2023 was cancelled, reports emerged that E3 2024 and 2025 had also been cancelled, the ESA claimed that “no final decision” had yet been made. ReedPop and the ESA parted ways in September, with Pierre-Louis promising a “complete reinvention. “of the event. ” The end finally came on December 12 when ESA confirmed that E3, which it had managed since 1995, was coming to an end.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Pierre-Louis said times had changed: “There were enthusiasts who were invited to attend in recent years, but it was a marketing and business style for the industry and to be able to provide the world with data on new products. Companies now have access to consumers and business relationships through a variety of means, in addition to their own individual storefronts.
What’s left are the ghosts of Reggie Fils-Aime saying “my frame is ready” and Keanu Reeves screaming “you’re beautiful,” as well as the lingering sense that occasions like The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest are enough to fill the void. . Fans and industry veterans paid tribute to the occasion throughout the day, with God of War director Cory Barlog among those saying he “loves and hates the show. “
“[I was on the ground showing the first god of war demo many years ago and I can see how excited other people were to play this weird new game starring the angry guy with chains. It replaced my view of things. ” Barlog wrote. ” RIPs at E3″.
I was out on the ground showing the demo of the first God of War all those years ago and I can see how excited other people were to play this weird new game starring the guy with chains. It really replaced my total vision. They both enjoyed and hated. this show. RIP at E3. ? ?❤️ https://t. co/cymAG0rRJN
Without E3, the summer programme is becoming increasingly disorganised. Each publisher now has their own shop, turning the summer into a marathon of individual streams, events, and announcements that end up drowning each other out. In June 2023 alone, there were more than 15 streaming events, some with dozens of games to cover. If there’s one explanation for mourning E3, it’s that the noise has hit the video game industry, resulting in the loss of deserving games in the process.
“The biggest loss for all of us is that the focus and spectacle of E3 meant that EVERYONE was paying attention to video games for a smart week each year,” Kramer says. “It’s a shame that our industry is squandering that goal. “attention and I will miss him personally. “
Kat Bailey is IGN’s news director and the co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Do you have any advice? Send a DM to @the_katbot.