E3 may stop being a live show this year and become an online show. However, ESA is working hard to recreate the experience with a virtual booth, conference presentations, online forums, and a ...... portal featuring leaderboards, and is hard at work trying to replicate that experience.

In a press release, ESA details how this year's online E3 portal and app will work. Naturally, instead of the usual over-the-top showcase, there will be an online stream (featuring viewer polls and tweet highlights), as well as hosted streams and virtual booths for all the games on display (featuring VOD, announcements and more information about each title).

But the portal also seeks to capture the social side of E3. While it is impossible to replicate being trapped in a crowded hall full of coffee-drunk PR people and exhausted journalists, E3's online hall will have a virtual lounge to hang out in. Oddly enough, there will also be leaderboards competing to be the most social, "allowing for a collection of gamified show elements to be displayed,

encouraging fans to interact in as many ways as possible."

They will also be able to customize their own avatars to hang out in these social spaces. We are not expecting anything as grand as a Second Life-style virtual convention. But if Haunted PS1 and Crows Crows Crows can create fake gaming conventions, why not the real thing?

Registration for the online portal is free and will open by the end of the month. Of course, this assumes you trust that E3 will keep your details safe after they leaked the personal information of more than 2,000 participants in 2019.

Of course, all the big showcases will be streamed as usual on Twitch, YouTube, and E3's social channels. This year's E3 runs from June 12-15, and we've obtained a complete schedule of what to expect at this year's expo.