E3 2023 canceled, ESA confirms, as publishers pull out

E3 2023 is canceled. Organisers at the Entertainment Software Association told their members Thursday that this was due to the withdrawals of big publishers like Ubisoft Sega and Tencent. Those companies joined console manufacturers Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony who had previously confirmed they wouldn’t take part in this year’s E3, an event that promised to return the spectacled gaming industry show to Los Angeles for the first time in four years.

IGN reported Tuesday, that publishers were withdrawing from the event. Others also questioned their participation. On Thursday, IGN reported that E3 organizers reportedly told members that E3 2023 “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.”

Polygon has reached to the ESA in order for clarification and comments. The organization will be updating us when it responds.

This year’s E3 was announced as a return to the L.A. Convention Center for the show’s first in-person event since 2019. ReedPop is a company which produces PAX and Star Wars Celebration events. The ESA has hired ReedPop to manage E3 2023. The plan was to combine a gathering of publishers, developers, media, and buyers with “in-person consumer components” and digital showcases. When it was announced in July 2022, ReedPop promised that “E3 2023 will be recognizably epic — a return to form that honors what’s always worked — while reshaping what didn’t.”

Geoff Keighley will produce Summer Game Fest which is a rival event for developers and game publishers. Microsoft and Ubisoft both have digital events that will take place in June, which coincide with Summer Game Fest, June 8-10 and E3 now cancelled.

The cancellation of E3 2023 — the third scrapped version of the event in recent years — is another distressing indicator of the health of the expo, and the industry’s valuation of it. E3 2020, the latest in-person edition of the event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 epidemic. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, E3 2019 was canceled. Instead, publishers of games held digital showcases that summer. They lasted for a couple months. E3 2021 was an entirely digital event. ESA had attempted to host both an in person and digital E3 2022 event, but they were both cancelled.