Deferred pleasure was always the driving force of E3, as the industry decamped to California for a tantalisingly brief taste of coming attractions. But you’re not, surely, supposed to leave thinking primarily about the future of the show itself.
This began with last June’s incarnation, the first with Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest stepping into the hole left by E3’s cancellation not just online but in person, in the old ancestral home of LA. Play Days was an embryonic event, but for understandable reasons, and Keighley’s lot made a convincing argument that SGF could carve out its own niche alongside E3, which US industry body ESA had confirmed that same month would be returning for 2023.
That optimism is rather harder to sustain now. E3 2023 didn’t actually happen, of course, its cancellation in March attributed to a lack of “sustained interest” from the industry, and as we write this, the ESA is having to deny reports it’s already also called off E3 for the next two years. On the ground, the conversation isn’t so much about the games on show, or the relative positions of the publishers and platform holders, as it is about these two events, and where they go next.
