Today, the ESA officially announced that E3 will not be coming back. The final in-person event was held in 2019, and a scheduled event for 2020 was canceled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, there have been multiple attempts to bring back the show, but all of them failed to gain traction. Now the ESA has given up on any future attempts, leaving E3 officially dead. While the writing was on the wall long before 2020, the announcement has been a sad one for a lot of people in the video game industry.ย
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For decades, E3 was the most important venue for developers and publishers. Every June, the biggest names in gaming would showcase what they had for the year ahead. For many in the industry, E3 could be stressful; a bad show could have a negative impact on perception for a game or even a whole company. Bad showcases would become the stuff of memes, while good ones could rewrite a bad narrative. E3 could even turn people like Reginald Fils-Aime into overnight celebrities.ย
E3 was far from perfect. In many ways, the show became more about spectacle than substance. Gaffes or mistakes by companies and even journalists could destroy reputations, living on for years in infamy. Regardless, E3 played an important part in the growth of gaming, and its impact is immeasurable. Across the internet, people like Nintendo’s Doug Bowser and Duke Nukem creator Scott Miller weighed in, sharing memories, photos, and predictions for the future.ย
Read on to see what the video game industry is saying about the death of E3!
