E3, now dead, was a show for a bygone game industry

This year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has been cancelled. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and show promoter ReedPop said late Thursday that June’s event, which was supposed to be the first in-person E3 since 2019, received “needed sustainment” from major publishers and potential attendees. It did not attract significant interest,” he said. Justify large-scale competitions.

At this point, the show’s cancellation for 2023 didn’t come as a big surprise, as all three major console makers have already confirmed they won’t be participating, with major publishers Ubisoft and Sega recently announcing that the show will be canceled. publicly declined to participate in In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, ESA’s president and CEO, Stanley Pierre-Louis, cited economic headwinds, digital marketing opportunities and COVID-related changes in game development timelines as reasons for the company’s exit. I mentioned

But the decades-long decline of E3 was evident long before this year’s problems, and long before COVID forced the cancellation of the 2020 show (and all shows after that). It was clear. Part of me misses the glitz and spectacle of his 15 E3s, attended since 2004. However, we are mostly aware that E3 was a show built for a very different gaming industry that never changed with the times.

The best battlefields of console wars

Before E3 debuted in 1995, a much smaller gaming industry dominated Las Vegas’ sprawling consumer electronics show. But as the gaming industry grew, its major players decided they needed another event to distinguish their business from the TV sets and music players that litter the Las Vegas Convention Center each January.

The show, which focused on new games, said Sony executive Steve Race said, “$299. I finally settled.

In front of an eager media horde, this kind of game for console supremacy was a central focus of E3 for the decades that followed. Completed with a price of “$599”) helped give the system an early reputation as being too expensive and too complicated for developers.

But by the 2013 show, Sony was selling the PlayStation 4 for $100 less than the Kinect-powered Xbox One. Sony also used his E3 presentation that year to launch a savage probe into Microsoft, which was facing widespread controversy over its plans to limit the sale of some pre-owned games on the Xbox One.

This kind of competitive intensity helped solidify E3’s position as the place where the future of the console gaming market would be shattered. But over the past decade, the major console makers seem to have realized they no longer have to run expensive E3 booths and associated press conferences to get customer attention.

When it came time to debut the Switch in 2017, rather than rushing to demo it months before E3, Nintendo held its own hands-on event in New York City in January. Sony followed suit in 2019, when he dropped out of E3 and then his planned 2020 event (before COVID hit) that year, even though the PlayStation 5 launch was imminent. Did. Microsoft held a press conference and game demo next to his E3 in 2019, but the company decided there was no need to actually set up an expensive booth on the convention center floor.