E3 is officially canceled
E3 is officially canceled
The gaming expo won't be held in person or online
The return of video games expo E3 has officially been canceled by its organizers.
E3 2023 was scheduled to run from June 13 to June in Los Angeles, but will no longer be going ahead, either in person or online.
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Goodbye, E3 2023
🎮 E3 2023 has been officially canceled
📣 The ESA announced it was scrapping this year’s show
🙁 It won’t be held online or in person
📅 An in-person E3 has been held since 2019
The expo ran annually from 1995 all the way up to 2020, when it was canceled by the Covid-19 pandemic. It was brought back the following year as a pared-down online event, and again fully canceled in 2022.
The event’s organizer, the ESA, had planned to bring back E3 this year as a fully fledged, in-person event, even as publishers and developers have in recent years moved towards announcing games via their own, online streaming events, such as Sony’s State of Play, Xbox’s Developer Direct and Nintendo Direct streams.
"This was a difficult decision because of all the effort we and our partners put toward making this event happen, but we had to do what's right for the industry and what's right for E3," said Kyle Marsden-Kish, VP of gaming at events company Reedpop That was co-organizing the expo.
"We appreciate and understand that interested companies wouldn't have playable demos ready and that resourcing challenges made being at E3 this summer an obstacle they couldn't overcome.
“For those who did commit to E3 2023, we're sorry we can't put on the showcase you deserve and that you've come to expect from ReedPop's event experiences."
In its place, Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest now stands as the dominant mid-year gaming showcase. It was first organized in the summer of 2020, following the cancellation of E3, and has run every year since. Featuring announcements from major players in the industry, including Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Capcom, Epic and Activision, its organizers have posed as a replacement for E3 since its inception.
The ESA has not ruled out bringing back E3 in the future. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, president Stanley Pierre-Louis said the company needed “to be mindful that we are in the midst of a very different period for industry in terms of game development and economic headwinds, so we want to make sure we are providing a platform in a way that is sustainable for today and in the future.
“We're seeing other shows coming back slowly, but coming back. They're at a different scale and investment commitment than E3 so we have to continue to work on how we create a dynamic and sustainable model that meets the needs of the industry.”
With Gamescom, Summer Game Fest and the Game Awards expected to return this year, 2023 will in no way be totally free of industry events and game expos. But none of them have yet achieved the renown or prestige that E3 commanded at its height.