The world’s largest gaming expo and conference, E3, will be online-only for the third year in a row due to the ongoing pandemic. “Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding COVID-19 and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and attendees, E3 will not be held in person in 2022,” the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) said. “We are nonetheless excited about the future of E3 and look forward to announcing more details soon.”
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Much of the world is trying to resume some form of normality, with gatherings of large people still really difficult to pull off. This week saw the return to an in-person event at CES 2022, the biggest technology conference in the world. We saw some weird and wonderful products as usual, like the Razer Project Sophia and the launch of the new flagship Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti. However, E3 felt it isn’t yet the right time to return to in-person events.
The ESA, a trade group led by the game industry’s publishers, is evidently being cautious because of the huge burst in coronavirus infections prompted by the Omicron variant. The CES 2022 tech trade show — which is taking place in Las Vegas this week — has caught a lot of criticism for going forward with its in-person event despite the risks of being a ‘superspreader’ event.
While E3 2022 is still months away and the current spike could be over by that time, the organization is in the midst of signing up companies to take exhibition space, as it often takes months for companies to pull their booths together for the big show, which in normal times draws more than 50,000 industry people and 15,000 fans in-person to the Los Angeles Convention Centre every June.
