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Rather than try to rebuild E3, the ESA has created an entirely different event to bring the games industry together every year; one that’s not open to the public.
The death of E3 in 2023 was tragic but not all that surprising. The writing was on the wall for a while, as more and more publishers pulled out, and then the coronavirus pandemic hammered home the final nail in its coffin.
At the time, E3 organisers the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) made some vague comments about trying to get it started again but with the Summer Game Fest increasingly taking its place there seems little likelihood that will ever happen.
That said, the ESA has announced it’s putting together a new kind of gaming convention, albeit one more interested in bringing together ‘changemakers across industries’ than showing off new games and hardware.
Said convention is dubbed the Interactive Innovation Conference or iicon for short, with its inaugural event scheduled for April 27 to April 30, 2026, at, perhaps tellingly, the Fontainebleau Resort in Las Vegas.
All the big names have already agreed to attend, including Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Take-Two Interactive, Epic Games, EA, Square Enix, and Ubisoft among others.
‘With iicon, we are creating a space for visionaries across industries to come together, connect and reimagine what’s possible through interactive entertainment,’ reads a statement by ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis on the organisation’s website.
Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser, who also serves as the ESA’s chairman of the board, adds, ‘It’s a natural role for ESA to host and support an event that fosters an open exchange of new ideas with our peer industry leaders.
‘iicon is bringing together changemakers from across industries to envision how the strengths of the interactive entertainment industry can break entirely new ground.’
There are several similar statements on the website from other key figures, like Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick and Xbox president Sarah Bond. But behind all the corpo speak, it’s clear this is an event solely for industry executives rather than the general public or journos.
It seems very much like the idea is to replicate the rarely discussed aspect of E3 where companies would meet and socialise behind closed doors, which was handy for not just big companies but also smaller developers looking for a publishing deal.
Publishers seemingly regret losing that aspect of E3, although you’ve got to wonder whether holding an event like this in Las Vegas, where there’s going to be a lot of after hours socialising, is just an industry scandal waiting to happen.
As for gaming events that are actually about the games, Summer Game Fest is unsurprisingly on track to return this year. Just last week, its official X account confirmed that the event will run from June 6 to June 9, although there are currently no further details.
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