E3 is dead — how big was it? legend for gamers

 E3 (short for Electronic Entertainment Expo) was an annual show/trade event for/from the video game industry and/or players organized and presented by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) from 1995 to 2019, and virtually in 2021 as final stablisment!

The covid event was a crucial to its dead, not only the current events!

Following cancellations in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, as well as Thursday’s revelation that it won’t return to Los Angeles in 2024 or 2025, either, you can safely stick a fork in the world’s former most influential gaming show. It’s done, replaced by events that stream online, like the Summer Game Fest, Nintendo Direct, PlayStation Showcase, Xbox Games Showcase, and Ubisoft Forward.

STARTING AND IMPACT

When started: The industry recognized that it needed some type of trade show for retailers. According to Eliot Minsker, chairman and CEO of Knowledge Industry Publications (which produced and promoted the show with Infotainment World), "Retailers have pointed to the need for an interpretive event that will help them make smarter buying decisions by interacting with a wide range of publishers, vendors, industry influentials, and opinion leaders in a focused show setting."

E3 Attendance and LA Economic Impact

Year	E3 attendance	Economic impact	Hotel nights	Sources
2009	35,000	$15 million		LA Tourism
2010	45,600			ESA via GameSpot
2011	46,000	$25 million	25,000	LA Times, ESA
2012	45,700	$40 million	30,000	ESA
2013	48,200	$40 million	28,000	ESA
2014	48,900	$56.4 million		ESA, LA Tourism
2015	52,200			ESA
2016	50,300			ESA
2017	68,400	$75 million	28,092	LA Business Journal
2018	69,200			ESA
2019	66,100	$83 million	29,000	ESA, dot.LA

I didn’t choose 2009 and 2019 just to make a nice round decade: it’s the first year after E3 returned to the LA Convention Center and the last year before the show was canceled.

And its loss will be a blow to Los Angeles. Last year, LA Tourism executive director Doane Liu told dot.LA’s Samson Amore that E3 represented an injection of $83.4 million to the city’s economy, much of it in hotel rooms where the city collects tax revenue.

“We practically give away the convention center if [organizers] agree to book a certain number of hotel rooms... It’s really an incentive to bring business travel to Los Angeles,” Liu told the publication.

Historically, around 30,000 hotel room nights are booked each year — and so now that E3 2024 and another 2024 event have apparently been canceled, the city is looking at a sudden deficit of 51,000 hotel rooms, according to the LA Tourism Commission’s latest meeting packet.

The convention’s attendance record stands at 70,000 attendees, set back in 2005, and that record was set without any need to sell tickets to the public like E3 began doing in 2017

WHY WAS CANCELED? again?

E3 is dead. Again. Probably for good this time, given the circumstances. A lot of people have a lot of feelings—a weird thing for regular folks to have, since this was an industry trade show—but one thing we should be remembering through all the tributes and dunks is that E3 didn’t mismanage its way into oblivion. Its demise is exactly what the world’s biggest video game companies wanted.

 Downtown LA sucks. The show’s industry-only focus gave it a sheen that was always a little too uncomfortable to be around. It could never reconcile whether it wanted to be a trade show for developers and retailers or an announcement fest for the world’s media. Downtown LA sucks.

But main reason was the eternal videogame company wars: E3 started dying when major companies like Nintendo and Sony began reducing their presence there, or pulling out entirely, and that had nothing to do with the limited dining options available around the Los Angeles Convention Center.

If there was one thing that defined E3 beyond “press conferences”, it would be that every event, and every show, had its own list of “winners” and “losers”, drawn up by forum posters and international media alike. The “winners” could bask in the glory and leverage it for increased exposure and sales, while the “losers” might risk sinking into oblivion.

CONCLUSIONS:

It is clear that e3 generated money, and that this was not the reason, but that for Sony (playstation) and Nintendo (wii/swicht) a judgment based on interviews nor on bad impressions was not convenient for them.

Its disappearance is exactly what the largest video game companies in the world wanted CAPITALIST YES! because in capitalism WHAT MATTERS IS MONEY

..the first impression is the first blow. No, Maycosoft and Xobx don't count here. which clearly cannot compete where Nintendo and Sony are kings respectively in first and second place