Update 06/22/2023 4:20 p.m. ET: As spotted by ResetEra, on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, the Los Angeles City Tourism Board of Commissioners held its regularly scheduled meeting and announced updates on tourism-related business and the like. Not usually the kind of thing that gets reported on Kotaku, sure. But in the meeting packet sent out a few days before on June 16, a small footnote on page 21 mentioned some big news: E3 2024 and E3 2025 are seemingly canceled.
Kotaku has reached out to E3 organizer ReedPop for comment and confirmation.
If the next two years of E3 are officially canceled, itâs highly unlikely that the once-popular video game tradeshow will ever return. Earlier this year, after canceling E3 2023, ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis, when pushed to confirm if an E3 2024 was still happening, wouldnât say, and only answered that the ESA would âhave more news to share.â Looks like thatâs true, but itâs not good news for folks looking forward to a return of the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Update 06/22/2023 5:45 p.m. ET: In a statement provided to Axiosâ Stephen Totilo, the Entertainment Software Associationâthe trade group behind the showâsaid the fate of the 2024 E3 event has yet to be determined.
ESA is currently in conversation with ESA members and other stakeholders about E3 2024 (and beyond), and no final decisions about the events have been made at this time.
Original story continues below.
E3 2023 has been canceled, as first reported by IGN. This follows multiple video game publishers and companies pulling out of the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo over the last few weeks.
In a report published on March 30, IGN said that two sources have confirmed with the outlet that the Entertainment Software Association (the organization behind E3) sent emails to ESA members announcing the cancelation.
Reportedly, in these emails, the ESA said that while E3 is still a âbeloved event and brandâ the upcoming 2023 expo had simply not garnered the âsustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength, and impact of our industry.â The email then ended with the ESA mentioning its continued commitment to advocacy work.
News on #E32023 from the source. pic.twitter.com/BK7TUlb8mZ
â E3 (@E3) March 30, 2023
Shortly after the IGN report was published, the official E3 Twitter account confirmed the news with this statement:
ReedPop and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) have announced that both the digital and physical events for E3 2023 are cancelled.
ReedPopâs Global VP of Gaming, Kyle Marsden-Kish, also released a statement:
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 whatâs right for the industry and whatâs right for E3. We appreciate and understand that interested companies wouldnât have playable demos ready and that resourcing challenges made being at E3 this summer an obstacle they couldnât overcome. For those who did commit to E3 2023, weâre sorry we canât put on the showcase you deserve and that youâve come to expect from ReedPopâs event experiences.
E3 2023 was set to start on June 13 and end on June 16. Kotaku has contacted ReedPop about E3 2023.
Why E3 2023 was completely canceled
In a March 30 interview with GameIndustry.biz, ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis talked about why his organization called off the big annual event, blaming Covid-19 and a bad economy as some reasons for the cancelation.
âWe were off to a strong start. There was interest among exhibitors, industry players, media, and certainly the fans,â said Pierre-Louis. âUltimately, however, there were challenges that proved too large to surmount.â
First, several companies have reported that the timeline for game development has been altered since the start of the Covid pandemic. Second, economic headwinds have caused several companies to reassess how they invest in large marketing events. And third, companies are starting to experiment with how to find the right balance between in-person events and digital marketing opportunities.
Pierre-Louis did say the ESA was still âcommitted to providing a platformâ for the game industry to market new games and meet up in person. But it wanted to âfind the right balanceâ based on the industryâs current needs. He also said the ESA will continue to advocate for the industry and its workforce, calling it the companyâs âprimary focus and priority.â
When pushed to confirm if an E3 2024 is on the table next year, Pierre-Louis wouldnât say, only answering that the ESA will âhave more news to share.â
E3 was becoming less popular
While it hadnât been officially confirmed by the ESA or E3 organizer ReedPop before this report, many had started to question if the annual tradeshow was going to actually happen or not. This past Monday, March 27, Ubisoft confirmed it was no longer attending the show. Previous reports had suggested Sony was skipping E3 this year, too. And Microsoft had already confirmed it wasnât going to be on the show floor. It was starting to seem like if the show did happen, it might be a bit of a ghost town.
E3 has experienced some rough times in recent years. Before the pandemic hit, the event was already struggling for relevance.
In 2020, the expo was canceled due to covid-19. In 2021, it returned as a digital-only show. However, the 2022 version of the show was canceled again in March of last year. ReedPop later said in July 2022 that E3 would âreturn to formâ in 2023. And I guess it was right, just not in the way it expected.
Update 3/30/2023 6:35 p.m. ET: Added comments from ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis.
Update 3/30/2023 5:35 p.m. ET: Added a statement from ReedPop.
