Fortnite booth at E3 2019
Fortnite booth at E3 2019
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As E3’s online event dies, others step in with digital events for gaming

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

The game industry’s biggest physical events have been evaporating because of the pandemic, and now it’s scrambling for solutions to fill that breach.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has always been the centerpiece of gaming events around the world — an event where many of the biggest games were unveiled for the coming year or more. But due to the pandemic, the Entertainment Software Association said it would cancel E3 2020 in June. Then it said it would hold the next E3 in June 2021. And today it said it would not attempt to hold an online event this June as a kind of replacement for the physical event.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.