The world’s premier video game trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), launched online on Saturday, celebrating play that “kept us sane” during the COVID-19 pandemic, celebrating fantasy worlds with Ubisoft’s new offering Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and promising a real-world gathering next year.
E3, which each year turned the Los Angeles Convention Center into a players’ paradise, was canceled last year because of COVID-19, and went virtual this year with a streamed event.
“During the pandemic that prevented us from being with so many family, friends and colleagues, video games connected us, entertained us and brought us together. Games kept us sane,” Entertainment Software Association chief executive officer Stanley Pierre-Louis said.
Photo: AFP / Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and 20th Century Studios
The association has hosted E3 annually since 1995, most of those years in Los Angeles.
“It’s an opportunity to convene and celebrate as a community,” Pierre-Louis said in an opening presentation.
Video game play has surged during the pandemic, as people turned more than ever to the Internet for entertainment.
Overall consumer spending on gaming in the US totaled just shy of US$15 billion in the first quarter of this year, up 30 percent from the same period last year, industry tracker NPD Group said.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti joined the prerecorded presentation to reveal that E3 would return to the city next year, and that he is eager to see it back in action.
“We look forward to seeing you in person, here in the City of Angels in 2022,” Garcetti said.
This year’s virtual event is spread over four days, and features presentations by major game studios along with console titans Microsoft and Nintendo.
French video game powerhouse Ubisoft opened the show with a look at fresh additions to its diverse lineup, including a new game based on the blockbuster film Avatar.
A trailer for the game, set for release next year, showed an open world in which players take on the role of the tall, blue Na’vi characters from the film that won an array of Academy Awards in 2010.
Keenly awaited Ubisoft games spotlighted included additions to the popular Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry franchises as well as Rainbow Six.
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