As the two Tweets above indicate, yesterday was a rocky day pertaining to the future of E3 as an all-encompassing event or convention. Earlier, the LA Tourism Board of Commissioners publicly disclosed that the ESA had requested and was granted permission to cancel the previous dates it booked for E3 2024 and E3 2025 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. As the Tweet by Stephen Totilo indicates, the Entertainment Software Association (i.e., ESA), which represents the industry in lobbying efforts and collects dues to fund E3, stated that while the dates have indeed been cancelled, they are "in conversation with ESA members and other stakeholders about E3 2024 (and beyond), and no final decisions about the events have been made at this time."

This time last year, the ESA announced it was partnering with ReedPop, the outfit that runs PAX, and they would be in charge of the organization and planning of future E3s. Then two months ago the ESA and ReedPop confirmed that E3 2023 was cancelled after many of its remaining stakeholders were not joining.

I don't know how you all feel, but this event seems dead. The ESA can say whatever it wants, but it feels like the last time E3 happened was a decade ago. The ESA also seems like it's not in the best shape. I bet a lot of members of the ESA are looking at their numbers for their self-hosted streams this year and last and looking at their dues, which still are supposed to pay for E3, and letting any calls from the ESA go directly into voicemail. As much as I want to say that there's a place in this industry for a marquee event like E3, especially after this year's incredibly anemic SGF, there doesn't seem to be a great path forward for the event.

to quote the poet laureate GRRM-

"what is dead may never die."

Damn. I know it felt inevitable but I feel the spectacle of a big industry week is sorely missed.

E3 has left a hole.

I knew when E3 2023 got cancelled that is was all over. Game developers and the three major gaming companies want to control the narrative by holding their own shows and once this was accepted by the public, that was it. People were just talking about how much they loved the recent Nintendo Direct. So why should Nintendo show up at E3 next year, when they can have another Direct?

It's a shame, E3 always felt like a special event that celebrated video games, and the unpredictability of what could happen made some E3s memorable. You don't have that now because everything is now carefully scripted by the big names in the gaming industry.

I kinda figured this would happen.

I hope something not associated with Keighley pops up to replace E3. Keighley's fine and all but his events are pretty soulless and dull. We've had several years of his events and all of them have been more or less identical in presentation while having little excitement in them at all. They've almost universally felt like they needed another quality pass from someone who knows how to run big presentations since they're always filled with awkward moments and weird pacing (but not good awkward as we would see back in the day at E3 press conferences or whatever. More of a sympathetic embarrassment type of awkwardness that's hard to watch).

The Double Fine-run indie showcases were magnitudes more engaging and better while probably being made on a budget that is dwarfed by what SGF costs.

They should clumsily doxx everyone just one last time. For old times sake.

Eh. Maybe they just aren't going to host it in LA next year. Maybe they'll force everybody to fly into Georgia again.

Oh well, we still have fun memories of watching the old days of E3 shows and we'll see what's next in the near future.

I went to E3 2007 for 1UP, which was at Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport and everyone at the time was saying that E3 was dead then. We've been lamenting E3 for over a decade now.

The video game marketing landscape is very different now than it was 5 years ago, and even more so 10 years ago. There are less games (that would be at an e3), less companies and longer dev times. At the start of the bombcast, the e3 time frame was games shown at e3 were released 6-18 months later. Now games are shown way in advance to recruit talent, shown at every major event and then eventually come out.

Maybe in a couple years there will be a reason to have an e3, and maybe taking some time off could be helpful and cool but it would take an industry change for that to happen.