Those who show up

Every year, on Internet forums and social media, in website articles and comment sections, and even in the bars and restaurants around the Los Angeles Convention Center, people debate who has ‘won’ E3. It’s always been a facile question – the real winners are the ones who get to spend a week in the sunshine playing games and drinking free cocktails, obviously – and the very notion of one company beating another plays into the often troubling tribalistic relationship that videogame lovers have with the companies that make their favourite games and systems. But it’s always been instructive in a broader sense: only by weighing up the relative merits of various publishers’ and platform holders’ endeavours can we form a broader picture of where the industry is, and where it is headed. Yet E3 2019 was the year that consigned that question to the bin for good. It is no longer appropriate to ask who won E3. Instead we must assess if anyone has finally managed to kill it.

The real story of E3 this generation is one of withdrawal, or at least the appearance of to sell. Perhaps Activision will be back next year. Perhaps 2K will be gone again. Perhaps it will be someone else’s turn. Whoever it is will not make anywhere near the same impact by skipping E3 as Sony just did.