It's official: E3 2023 is Cancelled

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Announced today, E3 2023 has officially been cancelled, marking the first once since COVID-19's pandemic to be cancelled. For anyone who wasn't aware - it had been coming out for weeks, if not months, that multiple huge publishers were opting to skip E3 this year, including some of the final remaining 'big' names (Ubisoft, SEGA, Xbox, etc), leading many to wonder what would happen to the event this year with so many dropping out.

Personally speaking, can't say I'm very surprised. E3 in general has somewhat lost it's purpose as more and more publishers realise they can create their own Direct-styled showcases at less expense, and have all eyes on them during it as well, rather than fighting for competition at a E3, which usually also had a lot of filler shoved in with hosts and performances. For a lot of people, it had just grown tiresome, and even when coming back, it was clear E3 was pretty much begging publishers to take minor news and expand it out to fill the event (IE - Gearbox's Borderlands movie, Capcom's event with two minor game updates and a ESports segment, and a Take Two diversity talk being apart of the schedule apparently, this honestly feels like a natural conclusion that's been coming a long while.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Heck, not just publishers. With YouTube being widely available, any studio that knows how to stream can make their directs on their own time and with easier means to gain traction.

E3 just doesn’t seem to have kept up very well.

[Perkilator]

In all seriousness, it feels like the writing was on the wall for a while now, but it still feels sad to have a world without E3.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

7 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Heck, not just publishers. With YouTube being widely available, any studio that knows how to stream can make their directs on their own time and with easier means to gain traction.

E3 just doesn’t seem to have kept up very well.

This, plus the growing lack of demos made to have E3 be the first place you could ever play the new hot games, likely didn't help things either. 

[DaBigJ]

Yikes

[Dreadknux]

Looks like the director of the ESA did an interview about the cancellation, but doesn’t really commit anything to a future show there either:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/e3-2023-is-cancelled-esa-tells-us-why

I had a feeling this was going to happen though, the games industry got too used to doing its own thing since Covid happened. It’s a real shame, ReedPop do some great events and I reckon they could have done something interesting with E3 if they had the chance. It sounded like none of the games companies really wanted to commit, though. Heard that ReedPop even reduced the floor space hire costs dramatically to help encourage brands to buy in, but I guess it didn’t work.

I think it would be sad to let E3 go - it does need to evolve to survive for sure, but I don’t like that every company has decided to spread all their showcases out over the month (a year or two ago, some companies were even putting their stuff on in JULY!)

There’s a great vibe - both online and in person for those attending - that has been lost since E3’s departure that no other show has managed to replicate (I don’t think Summer Game Fest is a good replacement at all…), where the whole games industry comes together for a solid week of news and megatons. I just don’t care about anyone’s showcase that’s not called SEGA or Nintendo that isn’t putting up during E3 week. And I’m sure a lot of people feel the same way.

Needs to evolve. But needs to come back.

[Jango]

We had a good run. 2016, never forget.

[Danj86]

It's value had been deteriorating slowly over the years. The fact that the event was cancelled and might never happen again means nothing to me. My viewpoint is far too cynical to even consider why it even needs to continue. The press get special access as long as they kiss corporate arse and maybe avoid saying some truths that gamers would dislike. With that gone, games journalism has another reason to not exist. Technology has advanced to such an extent that it'd be far cheaper for the publishers to stream their own content directly to the customers.

The only good thing about physical events is having playable demos of the games. But do they even still do that? Nothing is really stopping them from making the demos available on the consoles and PC, after a stream if they still wanted to let people try them out.

I do rather miss that time. Y'know? When you could play a demo of a game before you commit to buying it. Demos do still exist, just seem to be much rarer these days...

[sonicclaasic]

I enjoyed watching the E3 shows the early days where you had gaming companies showcasing there games etc. Now that gaming companies can live stream there contents on YouTube etc.