After several years of turmoil, and widespread assumptions that the media event was gone for good, organizers announced in a news release on Thursday that the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, will return as an in-person event in 2023. Supported by PAX, which has a number of in-person events happening across the country this year, E3 2023 will be an attempt to return to form for what was once the largest games event of the year.
In a statement earlier this year , the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the organizing body of E3, officially canceled E3 2022 and touted the event’s return in 2023. Today’s statement confirms this return, stating that “the past three years have confirmed that E3 convenes our industry like no other event” and revealing that it will be held at its usual location, the Los Angeles Convention Center, in the second week of June.
We’re back! #E32023 will take place in June at the Los Angeles Convention Center— with new partner ReedPop (the folks behind @PAX!)
Learn more: https://t.co/p9QUmBtkBupic.twitter.com/MdW00Qekeg
— E3 (@E3) July 7, 2022
Even before Covid-19 shut down the event in 2020, E3’s future was uncertain. Reduced attendance and news announcements dispersed over the course of the year rather than just at the event meant E3’s purpose was in question for a number of reasons. Today’s news release also referred to a “streamlined and secure media registration” for E3 2023, a reference to the media leak in 2019 which revealed the personal information of over 2,000 journalists. After a year’s hiatus, ESA delivered a virtual event in 2021, and canceled 2022’s in-person E3 in LA with no digital alternative to replace it.
Summer Games Fest, the digital games event that has run for the past three years, has absorbed a lot of E3’s previous content, including showcases from Microsoft and Capcom. The event will be in-person next year for the first time, assuming the place that E3 has just emerged to reclaim. Other platform-specific events like State of Play and Nintendo Direct have parceled out announcements over the course of the year, rather than revealing them all at once. The return of E3 begs the question of whether these publishers will return to the event, and if so, how their presence there will change.