What you need to know
- E3 2023 has been canceled.
- This comes after numerous publishers like Ubisoft pulled out of the event or confirmed they would not be attending.
- E3 2022 was also canceled, while E3 2021 took place in an extremely limited online form.
The writing has been on the wall, and now it's in digital ink: E3 2023 has been canceled.
The news comes via a report from IGN, sharing that organizers ReedPop and the ESA simply were not able to find the right amount of support from gaming publishers across the industry.
"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," said Kyle Marsden-Kish, global VP of gaming at ReedPop. "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."
It also comes after a week of news that made it abundantly clear support for the event was eroding. Ubisoft, easily one of the largest publishers attached to the resurgent event, pulled out of E3 2023. Confirmation quickly followed that Sega and Tencent would not be attending the show. Prior to this news, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo had all confirmed they would not be present in the event.
Summer Game Fest, hosted by Geoff Keighley — also the host of the Game Awards and Opening Night Live at Gamescom — is set to return on June 8, 2023.
Looking ahead, Microsoft will be holding an Xbox showcase and a Starfield Developer_Direct presentation on June 11, 2023. Meanwhile, Ubisoft is currently planning to hold a Ubisoft Forward showcase on June 12.
Windows Central's take
We've been through this song and dance before, but something about this time feels more permanent. I could be wrong, but it really feels like E3 is actually done for at this point.
I've got complicated feelings about this. I loved attending in 2017, 2018, and 2019, but I completely understand why many companies pulled away. Compounding the lasting effects of the pandemic, with many publishers shifting to digital-only events, and it's not hard to see how this happened.
