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(image: )E3 attendees enter last year's show.

Josh Miller/CNET

Next week brings chaos. Next week brings hype. Next week brings the onslaught of endless video game trailers. Next week brings E3 and its busy schedule.  But E3 isn't the beast it once was. E3 is changing. The Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 for short, гидра онион began life in 1995, partly in response to disrespect toward video games as an industry. After being tossed into the back end of shows like <a website (often in tents) video game publishers decided to break out on their own and create an event just for video games.  The rest was history. Over the course of the next few decades, E3 became a juggernaut. For years E3 has been the battleground on which major publishers like EA, Activision and Ubisoft battle for the attention of the games press and the wider public. A space where platform holders like Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony reveal new consoles or announce pivotal big ideas. Sony unveiled the first PlayStation at E3 in 1995, Microsoft took the wraps off Kinect in 2009. Perhaps most famously, Nintendo showed off The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the first time and the crowd literally went wild. E3 is the home of the Megaton, the big reveal. A primordial swamp for memes, GIFs and catchphrases. E3 has been the central point of the video game universe for a long time, but in 2019 things feel a little different. E3 has lost relevance, yet in some ways it's bigger than ever.  I say E3 is changing because video games themselves are changing. The hydra We live in interesting times. In 2019, "video games" means Fortnite and Apex Legends. It means livestreaming and rapid digital delivery. It means free-to-play. It means mobile gaming and Hollow Knight and breakthrough indie hits made by two-man teams. Today, the concept of video games has branched and broken out into a multiheaded hydra that's near impossible to encapsulate, let alone express in one single event. E3 flourished at a time when games as a product were at their most focused. They came in a box you bought in a store. You played them on consoles you plugged into your television. Simpler times. Every five years the cycle repeated itself. New consoles, new games, grand leaps in technology and visual fidelity.