The organizers of The extravagant E3 The game conference expressed the event dead In 2023. Participation in the bombastic trade fair overhauled by news was on the Waste In 2019 and after the Covid 19-Lockdown, the organizers of the Entertainment Software Association organized another virtual show in 2021 before wearing the connector.
Now the ESA is ready to continue with a new, vague -described event called Interactive Innovation Conference with the name “Iicon”. Big -Game developer like MicrosoftPresent NintendoPresent Sony Interactive EntertainmentPresent Electronic artsPresent UbisoftAnd more are already confirmed for the show.
But the President and CEO of ESA, Stanley Pierre-Louis, wants to clarify one thing: “This is not the new E3,” he says with WIRED.
Iicon will take place in Las Vegas in April 2026 and will not be a trade fair for game announcements, says Pierre-Louis. It will also not be a consumer show with a demos or a forum to talk about game development. He says there are already events “do all of these things very well.”
Instead, the ESA hopes with Iicon to close the gap between the many industries shaped by progress in video games, from film and music to health care and education.
“We are proud of the story we had to organize E3 and what it did to bring our industry together,” says Pierre-Louis. “But this is a completely clear event with a different purpose and another audience.”
The recording of Hollywood Studios makes sense. Games and Hollywood have a successful marriage from the comrade Super Mario Bros. Film and its performance as one of the highest animated films of all time to the HBO adaptation celebrated by the criticism of The last of us. The crossover with the music industry also feels of course, since musicians like Travis Scott and Ariana Grande have organized virtual concerts in Fortnite.
Opaker is the connection between video games and an industry such as healthcare. According to Pierre-Louis, however, they are more connected than they think. “Surgeons learn their trade from VR with mixed reality to understand how they can make improvements in their skills,” he says. “ADHD and Alzheimer’s are now treated by video games, sometimes by recipes.”
The organizers have not yet published any details about speaking or panels that will appear. According to Pierre-Louis, however, the schedule will not be similar to those of the shows that were recorded on the E3 square. “If you look at how interactive entertainment was used in a number of other areas,” he says, “you can see that it has a big influence, even if people don’t recognize or celebrate them as often.”
The new event will be “only inviting”, so that interested participants have to register for participation. This is space for big names in several industries. “What has been missing from E3 since the sunset is the ability to bring everyone together and at the same time include the wider business world,” says Pierre-Louis.
