It looks like E3 isn’t coming back in the next two years, at least, not where we expect it to be.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, the Los Angeles City Tourism Board shared a recent meeting summary revealing that “includes E3 cancellations for 2024 and 2025”.
Now, the reason this is newsworthy and not just idle gossip is E3 has used one venue since its inception; the Los Angeles City Convention Center. It certainly looked like this was an indication that the ESA had given up on the event in the near future.
However, the ESA did share a statement responding to the Video Games Chronicle article, stating that:
“ESA is currently having conversations about E3 2024 (and beyond), and no final decisions about the event have been made at this time.”
E3’s presence in the Los Angeles City is somewhat centered close to the founding of the event, and the ESA itself. Originally known as the IDSA, or the Interactive Digital Software Association, the ESA’s original purpose was to come together to create a ratings system in response to pressure from American legislators towards the video game industry.
ESA’s organizers then recognized that the industry needed its own trade show, as its presence was deemphasized and undermined at other bigger tech conventions like the Consumer Electronics Show and the Electronics Computer Trade Show. There was no particular special reason to use the venue itself, but it proved to be just right for E3’s original purpose; to show off games and game systems to retailers, not the general public.
For a brief period in 1997 and 1998, the Los Angeles City Convention Center was under renovation. E3 events for those years were held in Georgia World Congress Center. Attendance and participation from game companies declined, and this was when Los Angeles’ value as a venue came to light: most video game companies, even today, were closer to the West Coast.
E3 experimented with holding an E3 live event at the same time as the E3 trade show in 2016. In 2017 and the years after that, it became a live show open to the public.
Ironically, it seems it was this period that would start the decline of E3 as an event. In 2019, Sony would pull out from participation, and in the years following the pandemic the event would see less participation and also a few cancellations.
If the ESA and Reedpop are serious about changing how E3 operates, one of the big decisions they may have to make is moving out of their traditional venue. Gamers who have never been to E3 may not even know that the LA Convention Center is only part of a bigger entertainment complex, built by AEG. Adjacent to the Center is the Cryptocom Arena, FKA as the Staples Center, and LA Live. E3 could move or expand to either locations, or find a new venue entirely.
But the ESA also seems to have trust issues with its own members in terms of running this show. If they want E3 to continue to be the center of what will move forward as E3 Week every year anyway, they will have to work something out with their own members.
