E3 2023 has been canceled

E3 2023 has been canceled, organizers from the Entertainment Software Association announced Thursday, following the reported withdrawals of major publishers like Ubisoft, Sega and Tencent. Those companies joined console makers Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony who had previously confirmed they would not participate in this year’s E3, an event that promised the gaming industry spectacle would come to Los Angeles for the first time in four years. return.

“This was a difficult decision because of all the efforts we and our partners have put into making this event possible, but we had to do what’s right for the industry and what’s right for E3,” said Kyle Marsden-Kish, global VP of gaming at ReedPop, in a press release. “We appreciate and understand that interested companies don’t have playable demos to hand, and resource challenges meant they were unable to get through E3 this summer. For those who have committed to E3 2023, we’re sorry we can’t provide the showcase you deserve and have come to expect from ReedPop’s event experiences.

ReedPop and the ESA said they “will continue to work together on future E3 events.”

IGN reported on Tuesday that a handful of major publishers had pulled out of the event, while others questioned their participation in the show. On Thursday, IGN reported that E3 organizers reportedly told members that E3 2023 “simply failed to generate the sustained interest needed to run it in a way that would showcase the size, strength and impact of our industry.”

This year’s E3 was announced as a return to the LA Convention Center for the show’s first in-person event since 2019. The ESA enlisted ReedPop, the company that produces PAX, Star Wars Celebration, and other fan-focused events, to host E3 to organise. 2023. The plan was to combine a gathering of publishers, developers, media and buyers with ‘personal consumer components’ and digital showcases. When announced in July 2022, ReedPop promised that “E3 2023 will be recognizably epic – a return to form that honors what has always worked – while reshaping what didn’t.”

A competing event, the Geoff Keighley-produced Summer Game Fest, will serve as an alternative for game publishers and developers to showcase their wares in June. Microsoft and Ubisoft will have their own digital events that month, aligned with the dates for Summer Game Fest (which runs June 8-10) and the now-cancelled E3 (which was scheduled for June 11-16).

The cancellation of E3 2023 – the third scrapped version of the event in recent years – is another worrying indicator of the expo’s health and its appreciation by the industry. After E3 2019, the most recent in-person version of the event, E3 2020 was canceled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Game publishers instead held their own digital showcases that summer, over the course of a few months. In 2021, E3 was held as an all-digital event. The ESA attempted both an in-person and digital version of E3 2022, but both incarnations were canceled.

Update: This story has been updated with commentary from the ESA and ReedPop.