See you next year, I hope
For decades, E3 has been one of the biggest opportunities for developers to showcase their games to a large audience. However, it’s no secret that the event has seen a steady decline in attendance over the years and it looked like it was on the verge of death a few years ago. Fans and developers both thought the pandemic would be the last nail in the coffin, and IGN confirmed that both are – and are not – the case. However, what we do know for sure right now is that the E3 event scheduled for the summer of 2022 has officially been cancelled.
While E3 was also canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19, it returned last year as digital events only. The original plan was to host both in-person and online events in 2022, but ESA says it will now focus “energy and resources on bringing the digital and physical E3 experiences back to life this season.” next summer.”
So after two of the most tumultuous years in the event’s history, its organizers decided to take a step back, most likely to find out how E3 will continue amid the changing media landscape. changed drastically since the event started.
E3 is a long Icon of the game industry – while there are plenty of other showcase games out there, the hype and community surrounding E3 will always be unique, especially 5 to 10 years ago.
Even so, some in the industry believes that decentralizing game announcements is a much better way to do this, so that studios, publishers and indie developers won’t have to fight to be heard in the tidal wave of news. Either way, we still have a big event to look forward to this summer, as Geoff Keighley quickly Twitter to remind us that he’s organizing Summer Game Festival again in June.
I for one would be looking forward to seeing what the improved version of E3 looks like, but for now, we have plenty of other game events to look forward to.
