E3 2023 has been cancelled, organizers at the Entertainment Software Association announced on Thursday after major publishers including Ubisoft, Sega and Tencent pulled out. These companies joined console makers Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, which previously confirmed they would not be attending this year’s E3, an event that promised to bring the gaming industry’s show with glasses to Go for the first time in four years bringing back Angeles.
“This was a difficult decision due to all the efforts we and our partners have put into making this event possible, but we had to do what was right for the industry and what was right for E3,” said Kyle Marsden-Kish, Global VP of Gaming at ReedPop, in a press release. “We appreciate and understand that interested companies would not have playable demos ready and that resource sourcing challenges made attending this summer’s E3 an obstacle they could not overcome. For those committed to E3 2023, we’re sorry we can’t provide the presentation you deserve and expect from ReedPop’s event experiences.”
ReedPop and the ESA said they “will continue to collaborate on future E3 events.”
IGN reported on Tuesday that a handful of major publishers had pulled out of the event, while others expressed doubts about their participation in the show. On Thursday, IGN reported that E3 organizers have reportedly informed members that E3 2023 “simply has not generated the sustained interest necessary to conduct it in a manner that demonstrates the size, strength and impact of our industry.”
This year’s E3 has been heralded as a return to the LA Convention Center for the show’s first in-person event since 2019. ESA had hired ReedPop, the company that produces PAX, Star Wars Celebration and other fan events, to host E3 2023. The plan was to bring together publishers, developers, media and buyers with “personal consumer components” and digital to combine showcases. When it was announced in July 2022, ReedPop promised that “E3 2023 will be recognizably epic – a return to form that honors what has always worked – while reimagining what hasn’t worked”.
A competing event, the Summer Game Fest produced by Geoff Keighley, will serve as an alternative for game publishers and developers to showcase their products in June. Microsoft and Ubisoft will be hosting their own digital events this month to coincide with the dates for Summer Game Fest (which is scheduled to take place June 8-10) and the now-cancelled E3 (which is scheduled to take place June 11-16). are.
The cancellation of E3 2023 – the third scrapped version of the event in recent years – is another troubling indicator of the state of the show and the industry’s assessment. Following E3 2019, the most recent face-to-face version of the event, E3 2020 was canceled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Game publishers instead ran their own digital showcases for a few months this summer. In 2021, E3 was held as an all-digital event. ESA attempted both an in-person and digital version of E3 2022, but both incarnations were cancelled.
To update: This story has been updated with comments from ESA and ReedPop.
