The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and ReedPop have announced that E3 2023 is officially canceled.
This information was first published by IGN. If you’re interested in events in the video game industry, you can check out our other articles here.
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E3 2023 Canceled
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and ReedPop have announced that E3 2023 is officially canceled. The event was originally planned to take place from June 13 to 16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
This was a difficult decision because of all the effort we and our partners put into making this event happen, but we had to do what was right for the industry and what was right for E3.
We appreciate and understand that interested companies will not have playable demos and resource challenges make attending E3 this summer an obstacle they cannot overcome.
For those who have committed to attending E3 2023, we apologize that we will not be able to showcase the exhibition you deserve and that you expect from the ReedPop event experience.
Kyle Marsden-Kish, Global VP of Gaming at ReedPop
Their press release also added that ReedPop and ESA will continue to work together on “future E3 events”.
Can E3 2024 Happen?
Following IGN’s report, GamesIndustry.biz has released an interview with ESA president and CEO, Stanley Pierre-Louis, in which he was asked about what went wrong with E3 2023 and whether E3 will return in the future.
When asked what went wrong with E3 2023, Stanley Pierre-Louis pointed to the larger industry challenges that proved “too big to overcome”.
First, some companies have reported that game development schedules have been altered since the start of the COVID pandemic. Second, economic headwinds have caused some companies to reassess how they invest in large marketing events. Third, companies are starting to experiment with how to find the right balance between in-person events and digital marketing opportunities.
Stanley Pierre-Louis, President and CEO of ESA
In the interview, Pierre-Louis was also asked if ESA was no longer interested in E3, what E3 would look like if the event needed 3 major platform holders to have a chance of success, and if E3 would return in 2024.
Pierre-Louis did not give direct answers to any of these questions, although he did seem to deny that communication was an issue in preparing for E3 2023. However, Pierre-Louis did directly confirm that the cancellation of E3 2023 would not impact the ESA’s advocacy work for the gaming industry.
