E3 isn’t coming back
E3 2023 is cancelled, and the gaming industry is mourning. Like my colleague Ash Parrish, I’ve always wanted to go, but don’t think I’ll ever get the chance; the industry has changed enough that it’s probably not coming back.
Even E3’s organizers don’t seem optimistic. The Entertainment Software Association’s (ESA) president and CEO completely dodged when GamesIndustry.biz asked if the event would return in 2024.
“We’re committed to providing an industry platform for marketing and convening but we want to make sure we find that right balance that meets the needs of the industry,” Stanley Pierre-Louis told the publication. “We’re certainly going to be listening and ensuring whatever we want to offer meets those needs and at that time, we will have more news to share.” Compare to 2022, when the organizers were already talking about 2023 when they cancelled that year’s show.
A press release from event organizer ReedPop did give a tiny ray of hope, saying that it and the ESA would “continue to work together on future E3 events.” But I just don’t believe that future E3 events will happen at all.
The pandemic proved that gaming could survive without E3. The last year E3 took place in person was in 2019; the event was cancelled in 2020, held as a digital show in 2021, and bounced from in person to online-only and finally to fully cancelled last year in 2022. Yet even without E3 as an anchor, developers and publishers have found ways to make a splash that don’t include the investment required for a big booth on the expo show floor.
And when the pandemic arrived, the industry already had a playbook to follow — a playbook written by Nintendo. Since 2011, the company has seen enormous success with its Nintendo Direct video
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