High Mass of the video game in perdition, the E3, should not come out of its state of clinical death… at least not anytime soon. We learn this week that the 2024 and 2025 editions of the show will, in all likelihood, not take place either… or maybe if?
Canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic, held online the following year and canceled again in 2022 and then in 2023, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, aka E3, would not be ready to break with these cascading cancellations. We learn this week from The Verge, that the international video game fair would not be held in 2024 and 2025 either. Information that the American media gets directly from the city of Los Angeles, and more precisely from its tourism commission. This branch of the municipality has indeed shared a document presenting the planned and actual number of hotel rooms reserved by the city for the fiscal years 2022 and 2023.
This document includes a note specifying that these projections take into account E3 cancellations for 2024 and 2025 “. This mention suggests that the city of Los Angeles, where E3 has been held since the mid-90s, does not expect the show to make its comeback over the next two years. On the contrary, the municipality seems to be preparing for further cancellations.
All is lost ?
This information, disastrous for the future of the event, is nevertheless to be taken with a little perspective. As The Verge points out, they go against the grain of the latest statements from E3 organizers. At the beginning of the year, the ESA (commercial organization that manages E3) notably announced that it had joined forces with ReedPop (an entertainment company that organizes major fan conventions such as New York Comic-Con, in particular) to put on the tracks the 2023 edition of the show.
Aborted in the end, this edition was not intended to be the last. During the cancellation, the ESA had confirmed to The Verge that it had ” conversations about E3 2024 (and beyond) “, adding that no” final decision regarding the event had not yet been made “. Statements that contrast with the projections of the municipality of Los Angeles… even if the credibility of the organizers of E3 seems to have been damaged after this succession of missed meetings.
It remains to be seen whether E3 as we knew it ten years ago still has a reason to exist. Its loss of influence and its repeated cancellations have resulted in a very palpable rise in power of alternative events. We are thinking in particular of the Summer Game Fest (which this year gave rise to a very busy Xbox conference) or of the dedicated events, organized separately by Sony, Nintendo or even Ubisoft.
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