The Entertainment Software Association announced yesterday that there will be no E3 2022, even in digital form. The organization previously announced in January that the annual trade show would not be held in person this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though the ESA didn’t explicitly confirm at the time that a digital event could still happen.
E3 2020 was canceled two years ago due to the pandemic, but the event did come back last year as a virtual event. If there will be no E3 at all this year, the ESA promised that the annual trade show will come back to Los Angeles in 2023 as a physical and digital event.
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“We will devote all our energy and resources to delivering a revitalized physical and digital E3 experience next summer. Whether enjoyed from the show floor or your favorite devices, the 2023 showcase will bring the community, media, and industry back together in an all-new format and interactive experience,” the ESA said in a statement.
In recent years, E3 has become less and less relevant after big publishers such as Sony and EA decided to pull out and launch their own game showcases. E3 has also been suffering from the competition with the Summer Game Fest, a series of digital video game events from various publishers held throughout the summer. The organizers didn’t waste any time yesterday by announcing right after the E3 2022 cancellation news that Summer Game Fest would come back in June 2022.
Join us this June for @SummerGameFest – an industry wide celebration of video games, featuring a spectacular live kickoff show hosted by @geoffkeighley
Sign up at https://t.co/1ZwAhZ66ie to be the first to know details. pic.twitter.com/P2eLRISqfQ
— Summer Game Fest – Returns June 8, 2023 (@summergamefest) March 31, 2022
If the ESA did pull the plug completely on E3 2022, it’s worth noting that gamescom 2022 will come back to Cologne this summer on August 24-28, and it will be followed by the physical Tokyo Game Show on September 15-18. The COVID-19 pandemic hit the trade show industry pretty hard in the past two years, but things are slowly coming back to normal. E3 used to be the biggest event in the video game industry every year, and it will be interesting to see how the ESA can deliver a reinvigorated E3 showcase next year.