Anyone with even the slightest interest in video games, and even many who don’t, feels their pulse racing as E3 approaches . The Electronic Entertainment Expo is the annual meeting in which the main companies, studios and developers come together to announce their next bombings and flagships. But to become the global convention that it is today, many editions have been needed to refine it and find its place and tone. This is the story of E3 .
Claiming your site
The Electronic Entertainment Expo was first held in Los Angeles from May 11-13, 1995 . The 90s began with an unstoppable rise in the video game industry and there were more and more gamers around the world, but especially in the United States. Despite the success that it was experiencing and that would not stop since then , the companies that were dedicated to video games did not have their own space and had to settle for being the tree at the back of the stage at technology trade fairs, where systems of sound and the news on image took all the leading role.
Unlike what happened with Comic Con , which emerged as a massive event organized by comic book fans and later joined by the support of major brands, E3 was born as part of the industry. The Interactive Digital Association , which would later be renamed the Entertainment Software Association ( ESA ) , was a grouping of the main brands and headers related to video games that joined forces to be able to shout louder and give visibility to their products. This is how E3 came about, with 40,000 visitors and designed as a commercial meeting point rather than as a showcase for the whole world; but this would change once the gaming community grew.
Looking for your identity
In its first editions, when you walked through E3, you didn’t see people dressed up in cosplays, nor did the conferences have that show business touch. The first editions, although open to the general public, were intended as a business fair in the classic sense of these events and it took years of trial and error for it to become what it is today.
The temple of E3 , a place inseparable from the essence of this convention, is the Los Angeles Convention Center , where it has always taken place except in four editions . In 1997 and 1998 E3 moved to Atlanta (in 1996 the Olympic Games had been held there), and although it worked well it did not have the success or impact of its editions in Los Angeles . The other two cases occurred in 2007 and 2008, when differences between ESA and the Convention Center caused it to move to the coast, to Santa Monica. Beyond the place where it was held, these two editions were very poorly received because the organization wanted to give a too serious tone to the convention (those two years did not get tickets for the general public).
Currently, E3 is a window into the world of video games that shows how much it has grown and how that first function of simple entertainment has been transferred , making it a much larger phenomenon. A casual event in which fun is combined with the most commercial aspect of the sector and that every year manages to raise expectations more and more (the hype is over 9000 ).
Successes and failures
So many editions have given rise, how could it be otherwise, to good and bad moments . It was at E3 where Sony raised its audience by introducing the PlayStation One , where we heard for the first time about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or where we saw how Nintendo made us lift our butts off the couch in order to get the most out of it. your Wii .
There have also been uncomfortable moments, such as when Microsoft caused a deathly silence in its conference by announcing the exorbitant price of the Xbox One , much more expensive than the PlayStation 4 . Or the presentation that comedian Jamie Kennedy did for Activision in 2007, to which he appeared clearly drunk. We encourage you to look for other gems that E3 has left over the years and draw your own conclusions (or your own memes) .
A particularly controversial point was that of the Booth Babes , hostesses who were located in the different stands of the convention dressed in scant clothing and with a clear sexual objective . The extreme objectification that these women suffered in some cases led the E3 organization to toughen its rules to prevent these company practices in 2006. Although fines of up to $ 5,000 were imposed , there were cases in which companies managed to evade E3 regulations: THQ took advantage of the fact that the ESA could not control what happened outside the Convention Center to install a car wash full of women in bikini with which it promoted its game Saints Row: The Third .
E3 2019
Traditionally, the eyes of all E3 attendees and those who follow webcasts are focused on the three giants of the industry: Microsoft , Nintendo and Sony . These three companies are not only usually responsible for the new generations of consoles, but each year they present some of the most powerful titles.
The 2019 edition has as a particularity the absence of Sony , which for the first time has decided not to attend because “the world has changed, but E3 has not changed accordingly,” said Shawn Layden, the head of Sony Interactive . But since one must remain visible, Sony has organized Destination PlayStation , its own version of E3 that will be attended by all the company’s stores and third-party collaborators and in which the plan for next year will be presented. Everything indicates that it will be then when the properties of the PlayStation 5 are known .
With one less competitor to grab the public’s attention, the most likely stars of E3 2019 are Microsoft , Nintendo , EA , Bethesda , Square Enix and Ubisoft . As is customary, expectations are through the roof and players are beginning to run out of nails to bite into to endure the wait. This edition will begin on Tuesday, June 11 at 11:00 AM (West Coast Time) .
