The 2023 edition of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the American Video Games Exhibition, one of the main world events in the industry, has been canceled, the organizers announced on Thursday March 30, who let the doubt regarding future editions.
The event company ReedPop, responsible for setting up the Show by the Entertainment Software Association (or ESA, for Entertainment Software Association), explained, on the official E3 website, that the cancellation concerns the entire program, on-site or online, originally scheduled for June 13-16.
Launched in 1995 in Los Angeles (California), E3 brings together the main players in the video game industry each year. E3 did not take place in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, before returning in fully virtual form the following year, then being put on hold once more in 2022.
Declining for ten years
In an email sent by the ESA to its members and relayed by the specialized site IGN, the organization explained that the 2023 edition “did not arouse the necessary interest” to give life to a Salon “that would have accounted for the size, power and impact of our industry”.
For more than ten years, the E3 is considered to be losing momentum, firstly because the giants of the sector present their novelties there less and less. Major console makers and game publishers increasingly prefer custom launches to these trade shows and often choose to host their own events. Xbox, Sony, Nintendo, or the French publisher Ubisoft had chosen not to go to E3 this year.
Other major events have nevertheless succeeded in returning to face-to-face following the pandemic, in particular Paris Games Week which attracted 150,000 visitors at the beginning of November at Porte de Versailles, or the Tokyo Game Show visited by nearly 140,000. people in September 2022.
