ESA cancels 2023 edition of E3 and will ‘evaluate’ future of gaming fair

The E3 game fair will not take place this year, not even in digital form. Several game publishers recently announced that they would not be present at the fair, which means that there would probably be too few large companies. The organization says it is now evaluating the future of the fair.

Organizers Entertainment Software Association and ReedPop create on the E3 site announced that the fair, which was scheduled for June 13 to 16, will not take place. When the 2023 edition of the fair was announced, there was ‘interest’ among exhibitors, the industry, the media ‘and certainly the fans’. But ultimately there were “challenges that proved too great to overcome,” says ESA’s president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis v GamesIndustry.biz.

Pierre-Louis says several companies indicated that the timeline for game development has “adjusted” since the start of the Covid pandemic. In addition, gaming companies are said to have ‘re-examined how they invest in major marketing events’ due to the current economic times. As a third reason, Pierre-Louis says that companies have started experiments to ‘find the right balance between physical and digital events’.

Although Pierre-Louis does not say it out loud, it seems that there would ultimately be too few participants at E3. Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony already indicated in January that they would not be present at the fair, and earlier this week Ubisoft also announced that they would not be attending the fair. Sega and Tencent later indicated that they would not go either.

ESA wanted to organize the 2023 edition together with ReedPop, known for PAX, the Star Wars Celebration and the New York Comic Con. It would be the first time since 2019 that there would be a physical E3 fair. Pierre-Louis says ESA continues to believe in a platform for ‘industry marketing and meetings’, but that the organization must ‘find the right balance between the current and ongoing needs of the industry’. The ESA CEO did not want to confirm whether E3 will return next year.