LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) — The E3 Conference, once considered the leading expo in the gaming space, has been canceled for 2023.
The show was scheduled to make its first post COVID-19 return this year, but in a joint statement, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and events company ReedPop who produced the event, announced that E3 would not take place this year as planned.
“This was a difficult decision because of all the effort we and our partners put toward making this event happen, but we had to do what’s right for the industry and what’s right for E3,” ReedPop’s Kyle Marsden-Kish said in a joint statement with the ESA.
“We appreciate and understand that interested companies wouldn’t have playable demos ready and that resourcing challenges made being at E3 this summer an obstacle they couldn’t overcome.
“For those who did commit to E3 2023, we’re sorry we can’t put on the showcase you deserve and that you’ve come to expect from ReedPop’s event experiences.”
The cancellation impacts both the digital and the in-person event, which was scheduled to take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 13-16.
The event, which was known among gaming fans as “video game Christmas” debuted in 1995 and rapidly grew to become one of the most important expos in the gaming industry.
Game developers, publishers, and hardware makers used the exposition to show off upcoming products to an audience that was largely composed of gaming industry professionals with the expo only opened to fans and consumers for the first time in 2017.
After the event was opened to the public, attendance topped 65,000 in 2019, the last year in which the event took place.
