• According to reports, it is highly unlikely that we will see another in-person E3 event over the next two years.
• The Los Angeles City Tourism Commission says it does not believe the event will return in 2024 or 2025.
• During the pandemic gaming publishers and developers have chosen to have standalone shows instead, and that trend appears to be continuing.

Earlier this month is was not-E3, as publishers and developers held standalone events to showcase upcoming games, detail new projects, and make industry-related announcements.

While this was a move many had to make as a result of the pandemic putting a halt on all in-person events, it looks like this may be the standard moving forward, as the future of E3 looks to be up in the air.

This as the Los Angeles City Tourism Commission (which is where the event normally takes place each year) noted in one of its latest meetings that it did not expect E3 to return in 2024 or 2025. The Commission was sharing its projected numbers for the availability of hotel rooms, taking into account annual events that the city plays host to.

While the organisers of E3, ESA and ReedPop are yet to comment on the future of the event, when they chose to cancel the 2023 iteration, it did not bode well for the fate of the event itself.

At the time, global vice president of gaming at ReedPop, Kyle Marsden-Kish, explained that, “This was a difficult decision because of all the effort we and our partners put toward making this event happen, but we had to do what’s right for the industry and what’s right for E3.”

“We appreciate and understand that interested companies wouldn’t have playable demos ready and that resourcing challenges made being at E3 this summer an obstacle they couldn’t overcome. For those who did commit to E3 2023, we’re sorry we can’t put on the showcase you deserve and that you’ve come to expect from ReedPop’s event experiences,” he added.

Should E3 not happen again over the next two years, along with developers and publishers continuing to be happy to host their own standalone events, the once-biggest fan event in gaming could indeed come to an end.

Hopefully that will not be the case, but the current outlook is far from positive.