Posts Tagged ‘Expo’

Electronic Entertainment Expo

February 7th, 2021

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, which is commonly known as E3, is the world’s premier trade show that showcases products and services pertaining to the computer and video game industry. It is an annual trade show owned by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), a United States based association dedicated to serving the business and publicity needs of video companies that publish interactive computer and video games for video game consoles, handheld devices, personal computers, and the Internet.

Throughout the years since its establishment, the E3 Expo has been a venue for many game developers to show-off their upcoming game and game-related hardware. Through the E3 Expo, thousands of professional and avid gamers are able to experience the future of interactive entertainment. The most influential people leading the most innovative companies in the business attend E3 Expo to see groundbreaking new technologies and never-before-seen products for computers, video game consoles, handheld systems and the Internet.

The E3 Expo has been considered to be the Ultimate Expo for the video game industry with a record attendance of nearly 70,000 people in 2005 and 60,000 people in 2006. Because of this most video game companies spend more time and resources on their presentation for E3 than any other convention.

The E3 Expo has been widely covered by many websites and blogs with live webcasts, game previews, game media and blog entries detailing the event.

G4 has been airing the live coverage of each E3 from 2005 onwards.

History of E3

E3 begun with its creation in 1995 and has continued through the latest expo in 2011. From 1995 to 2006, the conference was known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo. For a brief time in 2007-2008, the conference was known as the E3 Media and Business Summit but was reverted back to Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2009.

Before the introduction of E3, most game developers showcase their products and hardware to other trade shows like the Consumer Electronics Show and the European Computer Trade Show. The idea of the first E3 was conceived by IDG’s Infotainment World and Interactive Digital Software Association (now known as Entertainment Software Association).

The first E3 in 1995 coincided with the start of new generation of consoles. The first E3 featured the start of Sony’s entrance to the video game industry with their new Sony PlayStation console. Sega Saturn, capitalizing on its head start on the gaming industry with Nintendo, used the event to unveil its Virtual Boy system. SNK Playmore Corporation has also participated with the release of their Neo-Geo CD. The E3 Expo has also showcased several video games for both PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Some of the games that were shown and garnered attention were Battle Arena Toshinden, Ridge Racer, Panzer Dragoon, Virtua Fighter, and D. Despite being on its first year of demonstration, the E3 expo proved to be the premier event for gaming in the United States.

Throughout the succeeding years, the event continued to grow and became a common place for unveiling of new products. E3 was able to featured the release of new game consoles like the Sega’s Nintendo 64 (1996), Dreamcast (1999), PlayStation 2 (2000), Nintendo GameCube (2001) and Xbox (2000), PlayStation Portable (2004) and Nintendo DS (2004), Xbox360 (2005), and PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii (2006).

In the year 2005, the E3 convention was first aired on television. From then on, all future E3 conventions were slated to air on G4 networks. It was also during this year that the 11th annual E3 summit was able to attract around 70,000 attendees. But despite recent successes in the years 2005 and 2006, E3 has announced that the following conferences would be downsized and restructured due to the overwhelming demand from the exhibitors.

On October 13, 2006, E3 has released a detailed new format of the show. E3 was originally envisioned as an expo open only to game industry professionals. Throughout the years, E3 expo has been populated by a great number of bloggers and attendees who were not perceive to be industry professionals. Through the revised format, these persons were excluded from the event and transformed the E3 conference as an invitation only event.

From 2007-2008, participants of E3 expo has been greatly reduced to 10,000 by 2007 and 5,000 by 2008. A separate conference called the Entertainment for All Expo has been held during these years to accommodate the public demand for a major, annual video game event; but this didn’t duplicate E3′s previous success and was later abandoned. During these years, the E3 expo has been criticized by both from within and outside the gaming industry; speculating that these changes have excluded, and even damaged, independent developers in favor of larger game companies.

By 2009, Electronic Entertainment Expos has decided to revert back to