The Electronic Entertainment Expo is the world’s largest video game convention, but with publishers and other companies having adopted their own big events in recent years, E3 as a whole is growing less and less relevant. E3 debuted in 1995’s Los Angeles but gradually grew in scale as the gaming industry became more popular. Nowadays, the event hosts the biggest names in the gaming industry, attracting massive crowds in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
As time has passed, E3 has faced several hurdles, with E3 2021 being considered as underwhelming by many game fans. Industry-leading game companies have chosen to skip the prestigious event in favor of alternative options, with Sony’s PlayStation Experience in particular proving effective at building up hype for the company’s first-party titles. A global pandemic and technological innovations have flipped conventional social norms on their head, and encouraged companies to move to digital spaces to communicate with fans more directly.
Starting in 2016, EA stunned the gaming industry by pulling out of attending E3. EA instead hosted a separate EA Play event in the same city of Los Angeles just days before. While EA Play was rolled into ongoing coverage of E3, it was its own unique event conducted separately by EA itself. Sony’s absence at E3 2021 was felt, but PSX has proven successful enough in drumming up anticipated that its attendance at E3 no longer seems essential. This clever business decision has also allowed both Sony and EA to dedicate more time towards promoting their products versus sharing the spotlight with the competition. It also means they don’t have to expend as many resources; it’s much easier to conduct an event digitally that doesn’t require multiple figures to jet over to the same location at once, with developers able to share their games from the comfort of their own room if they prefer.
E3 2022 Will Be Fully Online – How Much Longer Can It Last?
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on the gaming industry, and E3 is no exception. Due to COVID-19 spreading rapidly in enclosed spaces, large events like E3 have proven more difficult to conduct safely. E3 2020 was completely canceled for this reason. Additionally, E3 2021 emerged as an online-only event in response to the then-new COVID-19 Delta variant. Due to growing concerns over the latest Omicron variant, E3 2022 will be hosted as an online-only event again. Thanks to innovations like the internet and live-streaming services like Twitch or YouTube, E3 is no longer bound by the traditional rules of social events. Although it can provide networking opportunities to industry professionals as well, the main focus of E3 was on promoting the biggest industry games and hardware, which can now be accomplished in an online-only space, as Sony, Nintendo, and EA have shown over the last few years.
If E3 is on the way out though, it will be missed by people involved in the games industry. The gaming event is a fantastic networking opportunity for people. Without it, indie developers previously boosted by E3 may have a harder time standing out from the crowd and securing investor support. Publishers are continuing to acquire more indie talent, but the decline of E3 would be another loss to burgeoning studios that lack the backing of massive companies.
Regardless, it will be interesting to see what E3 2022 has in store moving forward. In the end, the gaming industry will continue to evolve. The Electronic Entertainment Expo should evolve along with it, lest it risk becoming completely irrelevant.
