When will E3 be back? Never, apparently, as the Entertainment Software Association, the group behind the iconic gaming event, has updated its website with a message that can confirm E3 has passed away.
“After more than two decades of E3, each one bigger than the last, the time has come to say goodbye,” the message reads.
“Thanks for the memories.”
As noted by the usual gaming websites, the death of E3 isn’t all that surprising, with the event having lost much of its steam in recent years with the leave of major companies that include Sony, which jumped ship with its PlayStation brand in 2019.
COVID-19 certainly didn’t help, either, as the pandemic forced E3 to shift to an online format for its 2021 show, something that, in turn, made game makers realize that they could just do the same thing and skip E3 altogether.
And while E3 2020 and E3 2022 were both canceled due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, E3 2023 ended up getting canceled as well after the organizers realized that publishers no longer cared about the show.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Stanley Pierre-Louis, president and CEO of the ESA, shared some of his thoughts as to why E3 has come to an end:
There were fans who were invited to attend in the later years, but it really was about a marketing and business model for the industry and being able to provide the world with information about new products.
Companies now have access to consumers and to business relations through a variety of means, including their own individual showcases.
The first E3 was hosted at the Los Angeles Convention Center, in May 1995.