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The Electronic Software Association and ReedPop announced today that their planned summer gaming event, E3 2023, is officially canceled. This follows a series of announcements from games publishers that they would not attend the event as exhibitors.
The event was supposed to run from June 13 to June 16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The show was canceled in 2020 and 2022, and the 2021 event was held entirely online due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The ESA intended to hold the first live E3 event since 2019. This was also the first E3 event organized by ReedPop, the company behind PAX and New York Comic Con.
Kyle Marsden-Kish, ReedPop’s global VP of gaming, said in a statement, “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.
E3 Abandoned
Earlier this year, reports surfaced that none of the major games publishers — Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo — planned to exhibit at the event. Sony’s decision not to participate was not a surprise, as it has not attended an E3 event since 2018. Nintendo noted that it would not participate because, “this year’s E3 show didn’t fit into our plans.”
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This week, Ubisoft, Sega and Tencent all confirmed they were not attending E3 either, with Ubisoft saying, “We’ve made the subsequent decision to move in a different direction.” It’s planning to hold its own Ubisoft Forward event at around the same time.
In an email sent to its members obtained by IGN, the ESA said the event, “simply did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength and impact of our industry.”
Other summer gaming events are still going forward, including the Summer Game Fest and the aforementioned Ubisoft Forward in June.
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