Industry
ESA and ReedPop split for the next E3, will move from LA
The alliance that intended to brought back and reorganize E3 has parted ways, with ESA making the decision to move on and out of the Los Angeles.
ESA has announced that it will no longer be working with ReedPop, the company responsible for producing events like PAX, for the return of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3.
The split comes after a multi-year agreement signed in 2023. According to GameIndustry report, the decision to end this relationship was a “mutual decision”. Despite this, the ESA is still adamant about continuing its annual show and plans to launch the event in 2024, as well as work on reinventing E3 for 2025, although as previously revealed, it will no longer take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
“We appreciate ReedPop’s partnership over the past 14 months and support their ongoing efforts to bring industry and fans together through their various events,” said ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis. While the reach of E3 remains unmatched in our industry, we are continuing to explore how we can evolve it to best serve the video game industry and are evaluating every aspect of the event, from format to location. We are committed to our role as a convenor for the industry and look forward to sharing news about E3 in the coming months.”
“We have enjoyed our time working with the ESA and appreciate their commitment to the games industry as a whole,” says ReedPop’s games events boss Kyle Marsden-Kish. While we will not be involved with the future of E3 we look forward to seeing its evolution and where the ESA takes it.”
E3′s rough road in recent years
E3 as an event has fallen on hard times in recent years. In previous years, it was considered one of the most important seasons of the year for the industry, with almost every major publisher making an appearance and announcing new games to be released in the months following the event. However, E3 has lost some of its relevance over the past decade.
The last in-person E3 event was held in 2019, and every other edition of the expo has been canceled for health and safety reasons during the COVID-19 pandemic, or for other reasons altogether once it moved to a digital format. Last year, E3 2023 was scheduled to take place June 13-16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, marking a return to a physical format that attempted to accommodate the public, press, and members of the video game industry all in the same place, but it was ultimately canceled.