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It has been confirmed that E3 2023 is definitely happening and will be run by events company ReedPop as part of a new partnership with the Entertainment Software Association. As detailed in a press release, E3 will be returning in the second week of June next year as an in-person event.
New organiser ReedPop runs several other large-scale events including PAXs East and West, EGX, New York Comic Con, and Star Wars Celebration, among others. The event will “welcome back publishers, developers, journalists, content creators, manufacturers, buyers, and licensors” according to the press release, and “will also highlight digital showcases and feature in-person consumer components”.
Also — full disclosure time! — Nintendo Life and its sister sites under the Hookshot Media umbrella are partnered with ReedPop.
E3 2019 was the last physical version of the LA-based video games expo before disruption caused by COVID-19 led to cancellations in 2020 and 2022, and a digital-only event in 2021.
The president of the ESA had previously confirmed that E3 would be back in 2023, but following the event’s cancellation this year, question marks remained. ReedPop president Lance Fensterman had this to say:
“With the support and endorsement of the ESA, we’re going to build a world class event to serve the global gaming industry in new and broader ways than we already do at ReedPop through our portfolio of world leading events and web sites.”
ReedPop’s Global VP of Gaming, Kyle Marsden-Kish, went further, promising “a return to form” for next year’s event:
“For years, we’ve listened, heard, and studied the global gaming community’s feedback. E3 2023 will be recognizably epic—a return to form that honors what’s always worked—while reshaping what didn’t and setting a new benchmark for video game expos in 2023 and beyond.”
A “streamlined and secure media registration” for the event is apparently scheduled to begin in late 2022.
We’ve discussed before at Nintendo Life how E3’s relevance has been declining in recent years, as well as how we have incredible nostalgia for the excitement of old-school E3 events of the ’90s and 2000s. The lack of focus we’ve seen over the last few years, with numerous alternative events springing up in E3’s absence, has highlighted the benefits of having a single focal point for fans and media to concentrate their attention. We would love to see a successful return for E3 in a form that makes sense in the current landscape.
We’ll have to wait and see what next year’s event has in store.
Excited to hear there’s fresh blood coming into the E3 fold? Think Keighley’s Summer Game Fest is a better bet? Let us know in the usual place.
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