The owner of E3, the video game industry’s most important annual showcase, has confirmed it currently has no organiser or location to hold the show in 2024.
Reedpop, the owner of events such as PAX, EGX and websites such as Eurogamer.net, has now said it will not work on future iterations of E3, after previously partnering with the ESA to relaunch the show this year.
The ESA has also informed the Los Angeles Convention Centre, E3’s long-held home, it will not turn up there in 2024 - following an earlier report which stated the LA City Tourism Department did not expect the show to run there for the forseeable future.
It’s already dead, please leave the corpse alone.
It is kinda sad given the legacy of the show, it almost made it to 30 and was the place of so many big industry moments (good and bad). Things have become more spread out now across GamesCom, PAXs, TGS, GDC, Develop and the many I’m forgetting.
I can get the argument that we really don’t need much of an in-person event given that stuff can be streamed instantly around the world now, we don’t need to rely on people setting up cameras in front of TVs to show off noisy gameplay footage, but the fact that so many others shows still exist proves that there is a want for in-person events.
E3’s death kinda came about because it got chipped away from all sides. There were better places for industry deal making to be done (GDC), Big publishers peeled off to do their own thing, and the expensive mark up that hit the other companies no longer appealed as they could get what they needed from PAX and GamesCom.
With most big publishers doing direct events regularly, and smaller devs getting better reach at things like PAX, who needs E3 any more?
All the things we looked forward to in our childhood are all slowly slipping away.
I am not enjoying getting old.
