The E3, acronym for Electronic Entertainment Expo; It was a series of video game fairs that brought together a large part of the year's video game announcements. It was carried out from 1995 until the physical edition of 2019, and a single virtual edition in 2021.
E3 has been taking place for many years, and thousands of news items have been made about it. Do you have questions about what it means? Don't worry, here we are going to show you in detail what E3 was, why it was important and how to enjoy it. Whether you are a curious fan or a very dedicated one who wants to read something, we have you covered here.
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The origins of E3 and its history
The story begins at the Consumer Electronic Show, the CES. Console and video game manufacturers They turned to that professional event and technology, hardware and software manufacturers to make deals with stores and retailers to whom they showed games and consoles to sell them for the Christmas campaign. The video game sector was growing enormously, and organizers in the early '1991s were tired of being relegated to being a small part of the fair. They used to suffer ostracism by being in isolated sectors. It is emphasized that in the XNUMX edition They were in a tent that was accessed by having to go through the adult products section, and since it rained that year during the event, the MegaDrive console that was announced there ended up soaked.
In 1994, an association of companies began to form under the name of the Interactive Digital Software Association, which together with the organizers of Macworld would decide create an event dedicated to video games to show the most important news. The event would need the support of almost all companies. Although the association originally arose to create a body with which to self-ratify the games after the violence scandals in Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. During the gestation of the event they were tempted by promises that the CES would leave a better space for video games, a promise with which they won over Microsoft and Nintendo. But those promises were canceled and E3 emerged without problems in May 1995.
An attempt was made to do the equivalent in Japan to take advantage of the different market. Only Nintendo went to that edition, and together with a competition with other events in the territory, it was declared a disaster. But its original version grew until reaching a record attendance in 2005 with seventy thousand people. That figure began to scare some companies that complained about the high rental prices and that a large part of the attendees were bloggers who were barely compensated to attend as opposed to retailers, chains and journalists from large media. This problem already happened with the COMDEX event, which stopped being attractive and was closed permanently.
To alleviate that They decided to go to a smaller space and make entry more strict in the 2007 edition.. They only got 10.000 visitors. After the second year as a closed event in which they saw that their current location was very empty, they reversed that decision. In 2017 they began selling entrance passes to the public without having to prove that you work for media or networks. Tickets would be very limited to give priority to the media and retailers that E3 has always targeted.
But by 2017 they had already begun to lose that feeling of exclusivity and an important event in the face of an internet that constantly and directly offers news. But it was still active as the largest event in the sector.
How did E3 start to fall?
During the last years of its existence it has been wondering about the need to continue maintaining E3. After a disastrous presentation in 2012 with the presentation of Wii U games, Nintendo began doing its Nintendo Direct those years, with which it announced games on its official channels in previously recorded segments. This way they wouldn't have direct problems like the presentation of Wii Music or that of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
When Sony announced that it would not be going to E2019 in 3, Shawn Layden commented that “The event began as a fair focused on showing the latest news to stores and journalists in the sector, in which the stores would see the games and consoles that they were going to put on their shelves and the journalists would write, but changes in the way of speaking with retailers and that now information and game demos can be sent over the internet without calling the media, they have lost much of their reason for being«.
But the fair wasn't just about announcing games. Investors could go there who wanted to try new technologies or make contacts with the biggest video game companies that just made their biggest announcements. Many business possibilities were concentrated. These fairs also have a component of demonstrating the strength of the companies and the video game sector, at least in American territory.
Is E3 outdated?
But you are users and what matters to you is whether it is worth it for companies to all get together to announce so many things. And the answers are a doubtful… yes? As Layden said, The internet has made an in-person E3 no longer so necessary. Physical magazines no longer include a DVD with the fair's trailers in special editions, because they are already on the fair's YouTube channels. The three main console manufacturers have decided to announce more content directly to end players through Nintendo Direct, Inside Xbox and State of Play, and they can broadcast them whenever they want, without having to reserve a theater. Even Devolver Digital has turned its conferences into an art, turning them into mini-movies with a lot of criticism of market trends, such as NFTs and ChatGPT.
Aside from its relevance, its position in the middle of summer made it ideal for advertising campaigns and game development in general. Although that meant having to make a team for a dedicated vertical slice, although that meant there were downgrades in games when they were sold to the public.
For many not-so-big developers, E3 itself was a problem. If they did not have a space at conferences or promotion and distribution agreements with Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft to help them in development, they had a hard time. For this reason, alternatives emerged such as the PC Gaming Show made by the PC Gamer portal, Wholesome Games streaming focused on non-violent games, and UploadVR for virtual reality games that are not sold to console players since Virtual Reality is a niche.
Furthermore, e3 was not the only video game fair to make history and show games. Penny Arcade, the video game humor website; It became so famous that it was able to host advertisements at its PAX (acronym for Penny Arcade Expo). And above all, Geoff Keighley, who for years was one of the most visible faces of the fair due to his position at GameTrailers, stopped presenting it in 2019 and went on to do its own Summer Game Fest events, with game announcements. It didn't go that badly, because he managed to show the second Elden Ring trailer in the 2021 edition.
The end of the beast and the event that could never be
Due to a leak after the 2019 event, we learned about the idea with which they wanted to renew themselves. Documents published by the Entertainment Software Association indicated that they were going to change the experience of the fair. From being a place full of stands in which to play, to numerous areas and experiences with celebrities and developers, with an application to register at a time and avoid waiting in lines, as well as shows and experiences for those who wait in lines. The idea was to make an event that was more of a social event, rather than sharing on social networks, without depending on advertisements or the press.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, such a vision could not be realized for 2020. For 2021, they had the idea of doing a virtual one due to the uncertainty about the safety of the attendees, in an experience that no one liked and did not help to those who invested the time to have a presence or consult the content on the dedicated website.
For 2022, the ESA has teamed up with ReedPop, who organize the Penny Arcade Expo. They wanted to go back to their idea of a social event, since ads are no longer necessary. But that idea was not made in 2022 or 2023, because that year they were losing support just a month after the event was going to start.
Finally, on December 12, 2023 and just a few days after that year's celebration of The Game Awards, it was announced that E3 would cease to exist. Several developers commented with sadness, because it was not a fair just to see advertisements. It was an opportunity to make connections between developers that otherwise wouldn't be made.
