Erased, Extinguished, Expired: The End of E3

Alas, the long-running Electronic Entertainment Expo, a convention created especially for the video game industry, is no more. Started in 1995, E3 gave publishers and developers a chance to show off their latest releases and works in progress, without fear of being eclipsed by the more general purpose technology featured at the Consumer Electronics Show.

E3 was important to the video game industry in its early days, a high-stakes competition between console manufacturers. The winners would emerge as dominant players in the industry and plot the course of gaming history, while the losers would watch helplessly as their reputations were tarnished by humiliating online memes. E3 was instrumental to the success of the first Playstation... but it also left Sony with a black eye in 2006, when the overpriced Playstation 3 failed to impress players with its promise of "giant enemy crabs," "real-time weapon change," and "famous battles that actually took place in Japan."

By the 2010s, the Electronic Entertainment Expo's massive influence had faded, due in large part to the instant gratification provided by the internet. Why wait for gaming news every July when it's delivered straight to your home on a daily basis? After game companies like Nintendo and Sony abandoned E3 to hold their own exclusive press events, parent company Reedpop put the expo on hold, then cancelled it entirely.

The expo that helped plot the course of video game history is itself now video game history. Pour one out for E3, a legend in its time that couldn't find a place in this one.