While the physical return of the biggest expo in gaming is set to take place in the summer, the biggest publishers in the industry won’t be attending.
According to a report from IGN, Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox are all planning on skipping E3 2023.
Once a major in person at the Los Angeles Convention Center, E3 has looked different in the post-COVID world. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have all adopted digital events, which occur throughout the year.
Nintendo Directs take place a few times over the calendar year, focusing on major first party and indie releases for the Nintendo Switch. Sony’s State of Play events does the same for the newest PlayStation titles. Most recently, Microsoft has joined the movement; their first Developer_Direct took place last week and detailed upcoming Xbox Series X|S games for the first half of 2023.
It is unknown what E3 2023 will look like without the gaming “big three.”
ReedPop, the company that runs the event, issued a statement.
“E3 is such a significant event for the game industry and being entrusted with an important cultural touchstone is not a responsibility ReedPop takes lightly. Since ReedPop took on the contract to run E3 six months ago, we’ve worked diligently with ESA members based on their feedback to create a new type of E3 that supports their goals and needs.
This process has taken time due to the tremendous amount of stakeholders offering input, though we appreciate that we could have been more transparent to questions for which we were still finalizing the answers. We continue to work tirelessly to create a show that brings together the global gaming industry. We believe we’ve created a new format for the event that serves the needs of both the industry and its fans, and are committed to building and growing it in the coming years.
As we spent much of 2022 refining how E3 2023 would take shape, reflecting on the feedback we solicited, we did not send a single contract to an exhibitor until the start of this month. We have received a tremendous amount of interest and verbal commitments from many of the biggest companies in the industry, and when we are ready to announce the exhibitors we are confident it will be a lineup that will make the trip to Los Angeles well worth it for the industry and consumers alike.”
E3 2023 will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 13th through the 16th. The 15th and 16th will feature open access to the public.