After a year-long wait, the big video game industry trade show has finally been canceled. The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which had been set to take place from June 13-16 in Los Angeles, was cancelled due to a lack of support for the event, IGN reports.
The news of E3’s demise comes following a number of high-profile companies announcing that they would not be attending the event. First Nintendo and Xbox bowed out of the show, followed by Ubisoft and then Sega and Tencent.
While the move doesn’t mean that the event is going away completely, it does signal the decline of a traditional trade show in an age where big game announcements can be delivered to audiences without the need for the traditional E3 experience.
Those announcements often come via pre-recorded videos or livestreams, which don’t require paying the ESA a massive sum of money for floor space, nor do they necessitate months of planning and preparing playable demos.
However, it’s important to note that while it may be sad that the biggest show in the gaming industry is no longer in existence, there are other events to look forward to instead. Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest is still running this year, and Microsoft is holding a Starfield direct and larger showcase on June 11, while Ubisoft is hosting its own event called Ubisoft Forward Live.
As ReedPop and the ESA put it in an email to publishers, “E3 simply did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength and impact of our industry.” The organization will continue to work with ReedPop on future events.
, which had been set to take place from June 13-16 in Los Angeles, was cancelled due to a lack of support for the event.){kind=link}