Games conference the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has been cancelled for 2023. The news was confirmed by events company and publisher ReedPop after an email from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) broke the news to members earlier today.
It’s been nearly a year after the ESA and ReedPop announced that they would be working together on a 2023 iteration of the famous E3 games conference, an announcement which followed the cancellation of the 2022 E3 event.
In the email (via IGN) it was claimed that while E3 “remains a beloved event and brand”, 2023’s E3 wasn’t drawing enough attention to “execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength and impact of our industry.”
In an interview published on the ReedPop-owned GamesIndustry.biz, ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis offered comment on why the event was cancelled, saying: “We were off to a strong start. There was interest among exhibitors, industry players, media and certainly the fans. Ultimately, however, there were challenges that proved too large to surmount.”
Pierre-Louis points at changing development timelines, economic instability and the fact that many companies are experimenting with their own formats for delivering game announcements to players as difficulties for the event and the news itself comes after reports of Ubisoft, Sega and even Tencent pulling out of the event over the last week.
Pierre-Louis also added information about the future of the event, saying: “We’re committed to providing an industry platform for marketing and convening but we want to make sure we find that right balance that meets the needs of the industry. We’re certainly going to be listening and ensuring whatever we want to offer meets those needs and at that time, we will have more news to share.”
E3 2023 was planned to be held from June 13-16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center and would have been the first in-person event since 2019. E3 took place as a digitally only event in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.