It’s Official: E3 is Dead
- Laurent Giret
- Dec 12, 2023
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It’s the end of the road for E3, the annual trade show for the video games industry that never managed to come back after the COVID-19 pandemic. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) announced today that it has decided to end E3 after the event was canceled for two years in a row.
“After more than two decades of serving as a central showcase for the video game industry, ESA has decided to end E3. ESA remains focused on advocating for ESA member companies and the industry workforce who fuel positive cultural and economic impact every day,” the organizations said in a statement posted on X.
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After more than two decades of serving as a central showcase for the video game industry, ESA has decided to end E3. ESA remains focused on advocating for ESA member companies and the industry workforce who fuel positive cultural and economic impact every day.…
— Entertainment Software Association (@theESA) December 12, 2023
The E3 debut show happened in 1995 in Los Angeles, and the last in-person event happened in 2019. After E3 2020 was cancelled due to COVID, there was a digital E3 in 2021, but no event in 2022 and 2023. This year was supposed to mark the return to an in-person event in Los Angeles, but E3 2023 was canceled in March due to an overall lack of interest from the industry.
To be fair, E3 was already on a downward spiral before the pandemic happened as the biggest publishers including Sony and Microsoft stopped attending the event. It also didn’t help that Geoff Keighley, the creator of The Games Awards who used to participate to E3 every year also stopped his collaboration with the ESA to launch a competing digital event, the Summer Game Fest.
If the Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards have now become the main two events gamers don’t want to miss every year, game publishers have also learned to spill out game announcements throughout the year via mini-conferences that are live-streamed on the Internet. Nintendo and Sony really excel at that today, and Microsoft is also starting to get better at it.