The plug has been pulled on the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
The E3 trade convention, which had been canceled the past few years for various reasons, is not coming back.
“After more than two decades of hosting an event that has served as a central showcase for the U.S. and global video game industry, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has decided to bring E3 to a close,” the group said in a statement, according to Variety.
E3 began in 1995, The Washington Post reported. Before that, video games were lumped in to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, but that wasn’t the focus of that expo.
News of the decision was posted to social media.
— E3 (@E3) December 12, 2023
The convention has not been held in person for several years.
It was first canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, it was held virtually, and in 2022 and 2023, it was canceled because the association couldn’t find enough vendors to put on the expo, Variety reported.
But it wasn’t the pandemic that caused the show’s final demise.
Geoff Keighley, founder of the Game Awards and E3 attendee, launched his own event, the Summer Game Fest. He also said in-person events don’t serve fans, developers or publishers and that online events reach the audience better, according to Variety.
The Verge reported that the industry has changed and predicted the expo’s end back in March, highlighting that systems still sell when consumers can’t try them out before hitting the market. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S were launched in November 2020 during the pandemic and sales were still strong three years later.
PlayStation stopped participating in 2018. Nintendo began holding its own launch events in 2011, the Post reported.
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