E3 2023 has been officially canceled

E3 2023 has been canceled, according to an email sent out by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), owners and previous organizers of the event, as reported by IGN.

The news comes from two different sources that IGN claims received the email in question, which said that while E3 “remains a beloved event and brand”, the 2023 revival of the event that would have brought it back to the Los Angeles Convention Center in June “did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength, and impact of our industry.”

After the announcement was made, the ESA published an official statement from Kyle Marsden-Kish Global VP of Gaming at ReedPop:

“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. 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.”

The industry shifts once again

ReesPop was chosen as the new organizer of the event and has been working on its return since the announcement last year. E3 2023 was set to take place from June 13-16 in the Los Angeles Convention Center, marking its return to a physical format that attempted to accommodate the public, press, and members of the videogame industry all at once in the same place. In previous years it had been considered one of the most important seasons of the year for the industry, with almost every major publisher making appearances and announcing new games to be released in the months after the event. However, E3 lost some relevance in the past decade, and eventually, Sony announced they wouldn’t attend the show again.

The last in-person E3 event took place in 2019, and every other edition of the expo was canceled for safety and health reasons during the COVID-19 pandemic, or for different reasons altogether once it changed to a digital format.

The cancelation of E3 2023 comes after weeks of publishers announcing their intention to not be present during the event this year. First it was the Big 3 (Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox), and eventually Ubisoft, Devolver, and more members of the industry. The ESA and ReedPop have stated that they’ll continue to work together on “future E3 events”, but no specifics have been shared.

Source | IGN