This year, we lived a moment that many playersit hurt our souls and it was to see how the most important video game fair in the world announced its celebration dates in this year 2023 and how, later, the trickle of companies that gave up going there caused it to be canceled totally. Something that leaves the event mortally wounded for the future.
Obviously, when it is specified in the title that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft flew E3 we’re not saying they committed a crime but figuratively speaking they are the ones who with their business decisions caused the industry has stopped trusting the most relevant show of the entire planet. At least if you don’t count Japan, where they continue to celebrate their Tokyo Game Show as if it were another world.
Events without soul or interest
In any case, we cannot say that the three heavyweights are jointly responsible for closing E3 to the same extent, since some took this decision before others and the last one, seeing the panorama, did not had no choice but to accept reality and leave. So in the first place we have to place Nintendo, which was the pioneer that jumped ship a few years ago to give us their Direct. For this moment at least, Sony and Microsoft have continued with the to show.
While PlayStation and Xbox remained at the show, nothing changed. Satellite companies continued to flow in, with large stalls and important announcements, in pre-E3 conferences which made the happiness of the players. Firstly because they really offered relevant information and secondly because we got to see the faces of many developers livespeaking to a global audience watching them.
But the year 2019 arrived and Sony decided it was getting off the boat because “it was a show without much commercial activity. The world has changed, but E3 hasn’t changed accordingly.” He even went so far as to claim that it was only of interest to “stores and journalists,” as if they hadn’t profited of the free publicity they received from the media around the world year after year. Also, curiously, this world other than Los Angeles hasn’t touched Japan, where its TGS is still a staple date on the calendar.
So the result of the death of E3 is what we have now, a randomly scattered calendar of canned events that, like the last showcase from Sony –or any Direct from Nintendo–, they have neither soul nor interest because before departure to show television has already filtered almost all the news. It’s that you have to record things several weeks in advance, that it’s difficult to maintain the confidentiality of what’s going to be said.
¿Y Microsoft?
The one who bears the least responsibility in all this is Microsoft because, surely, He is the one who has the most interest in the existence of an E3, as an umbrella brand that arouses the interest of all users, regardless of the system of which they are fans or followers. Those of Phil Spencer found themselves alone at E3, without Sony or Nintendo, so with all the logic in the world they thought it didn’t make sense to continue within the show.
So they all killed her and she died alone. And in this change those we have lost are the users that we had already become accustomed to getting up at dawn to attend conferences from Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, etc., as we do every year with the Oscars. Meeting up with friends and knowing that there are one or two nights a year when you will sleep less. But that possibility was stolen from us and now we just have to give the play on Youtube. Nothing more.