A 2024 E3 event is looking unlikely, as convention company ReedPop will no longer work on future events alongside E3 organizer the Entertainment Software Association. Following the cancellation of this year’s E3, the ESA also informed the Los Angeles Convention Center that it has no plans to put on a show in that venue next year. If an E3 event is held in 2024, it’ll be in a different venue for the first time since 2008.
According to GamesIndustry.biz, the ESA still has big plans for E3 and is working on a “complete reinvention” of the show for a possible return in 2025. ReedPop, the organizer behind PAX, originally signed a multi-year deal to relaunch E3, which hasn’t held an in-person event since 2019. E3 2023 was canceled at the last minute due to a cited lack of interest from publishers and developers, leading to ReedPop and the ESA parting ways.
“We appreciate ReedPop’s partnership over the past 14 months and support their ongoing efforts to bring industry and fans together through their various events,” ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis said to Gamesindustry.biz. “While the reach of E3 remains unmatched in our industry, we are continuing to explore how we can evolve it to best serve the video game industry and are evaluating every aspect of the event, from format to location. We are committed to our role as a convenor for the industry and look forward to sharing news about E3 in the coming months.”
While the decline of E3 began over a period of several years, the COVID-19 pandemic only hastened the fall of the event. The ESA moved to hold an all-digital E3 in 2021 that ended up losing more money than it earned, while the planned 2022 and 2023 shows were canceled. Several other shows have arrived to fill in the gap left by E3, most noticeably Summer Game Fest, which is spearheaded by host/producer Geoff Keighley and is joined by several other smaller and dedicated events during what has become colloquially known as Not-E3 season.
“I think E3 sort of killed itself in a way,” Keighley said back June when he was asked about his show’s reputation as the killer of E3. “I understand why people say [I killed E3], but I think if anything, we created Summer Game Fest, and I built Summer Game Fest because I saw the wheels falling off the wagon of E3.”
