E3 2023: ESA confirms return with physical and digital edition

E3 2023 will once again delight publishers, studios, gamers and the global press.

For the second time in three years, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has been canceled entirely, with organizers from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) blaming the coronavirus for continued health risks and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and some attendees. The professional body that represents the video game industry in the United States said last March that it plans to bring the famous American show back next year.

E3 will return in 2023. https://t.co/OzOeL3TpDi

June 7, 2022

Days before the launch of Summer Game Fest 2022, ESA President Stanley Pierre-Louis reaffirmed this stance in an interview with The Washington Post: “We are excited to be back in 2023 with a digital and physical event. As much as we love these digital events, and as much as they affect people, and as much as we want to achieve global coverage, as far as we know people have a strong desire to come together – to be able to connect in person, see everyone else and talk about what makes games great. I think the good thing about all this experimentation is that companies of all sizes are trying to figure out what works best to promote the product and content they want to share with consumers. And I think there is room for a physical living room; I think it’s important to have a numerical reach. Combining these two elements, I think

Is E3 really dead?

Last year, Reggie Fils-Aimé, former head of Nintendo of America, said he thought the ESA needed to act quickly if it wanted to save the event: “I think E3 is an event and when new content is published and celebrated, I think this is truly magic for the global gaming business. I must say that what I have read does not seem all that convincing. If I was king for a day, I would tell you how I would do it. I think digital is a good solution and the reason is that E3 usually has over 60,000 attendees. There are millions of people out there who want to know what’s going on and hosting a digital event is the way to bring that to life, so this is the right way to go.

However, I think platform owners need to find a digital way to allow their fans, their players, to experience the content, because that’s the key to E3, being able to play The Last of Us Part 3 for the first time or play next Breath of Wild game for the first time or play the next big game from the new merger of all Xbox studios. Playing for the first time is magic, and platform owners need to figure out how to deliver that experience to their fans in a digital format like E3. I think it would be great. What I’ve read, like I said, doesn’t support this, and if you don’t have all these different elements working together – then big ads, practical,