Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-3121860-20160717160838/@comment-4651179-20160717181434

That's a bit of a tricky question that can't really be answered with a simple "Yes" or "No" without leaving some important details behind.

The universe which had the denomination "Earth-616," the regular Marvel Universe, does exist, however, due to editorial preference, Marvel has decided to stop calling it "Earth-616" in favor of "Earth Prime." A handbook writer has even told me that Marvel plans to retroactively stop referring to the Marvel Universe as "Earth-616," to the point future entries in handbooks regarding events that even take place before Secret Wars (the moment Earth-616 stopped being called that) will even use "Earth Prime" instead of "Earth-616."

It's worth taking into account that it's much more of an editorial whim than preference. Editor Tom Brevoort, a known oppositor of using the "Earth-616" terminology, is the person behind this change. And its implementation has its retractors even inside Marvel's editorial, editor Jordan D. White has expressed his disgruntlement more than once in his personal blog, for example.

Here in the wiki we still use the term because of convenience. Replacing any use of "Earth-616" in an article with "Earth Prime" would take a lot of effort, and because the point of calling it "Earth Prime" is to avoid giving it a number, technically nothing says its number can't be 616.