E3 is completed, for good this time. The Entertainment Software Association confirmed today that the occasion is not going to be taking place in 2024 or any time thereafter, bringing 28 years of the online game business’s most prolific commerce occasion to a sudden, unceremonious finish.

E3’s demise isn’t wholly surprising. The annual occasion, a three-day pageant (with press conferences main as much as its showfloor opening a day or two earlier than), was as soon as the top of showcases for corporations’ forthcoming titles and consoles. As platforms like Twitch grew extra common, nonetheless, gamemakers and publishers now not wanted to depend on a commerce present to make a splash. With the present’s poor attendance at what can be its remaining in-person occasion in 2019, and the ESA’s troubles with reviving the present post-pandemic, the writing has been on the wall. In April, following information that the ESA was once more canceling the summer time occasion, the explanation was apparent: Streaming killed E3.

“Thanks to streaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube, companies now have the power to deliver news to consumers in-person and online simultaneously, without the need for public relation firms or journalists,” I wrote on the time. “Nintendo, for example, has perfected this with Nintendo Direct, its series of hyped and tightly controlled prerecorded marketing events. Similarly, [The Game Awards creator Geoff] Keighley’s [Summer Game Fest], built during a time when no one could safely gather, is envisioned as a digital-savvy event that can run without the need for a physical presence. Between game companies creating their own events and Keighley’s growing chokehold on the streaming space, thanks to the popularity of The Game Awards, E3 is largely redundant.”

ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis mentioned as a lot in his feedback to The Washington Post asserting the tip of the occasion, including that though followers have been invited to attend in E3’s sundown years, it was extra of a enterprise and advertising and marketing confab. Companies, he mentioned, now “have access to consumers and to business relations through a variety of means, including their own individual showcases.”

The gaming world simply doesn’t want E3 the best way it used to. The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest are actually related to huge bulletins and trailer reveals. E3 hasn’t been related in almost 5 years.

I began protecting the online game business in 2012 and attended my first E3 the next 12 months. At the time, E3 was the top of gaming occasions—an all-hands-on-deck affair the place videogame journalists routinely filed a number of tales per day whereas working from big-hype promo occasions to big-hype conferences with sport corporations. (During my first 12 months, I filmed a video wrap-up with a 101-degree fever I’d developed by the week’s finish.) Gamers anticipated such protection, they usually learn it devoutly.