From the minds that brought you the alliterative Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the ESA today announced the Interactive Innovation Conference, which they are calling "iicon" and not I2, and which is set to take place in Las Vegas in 2026.
According to the ESA’s press release, iicon will be “a first-of-its-kind event designed to connect visionaries, thought leaders and innovators from across industries to harness the power of interactive entertainment.” Who are those visionaries? Participants confirmed so far include EA, Epic, Microsoft, Sony, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and Nintendo, among others. What are the industries these visionaries hail from across? Video games.
You might now be asking yourself what about this is, as the ESA states, first-of-its-kind, and not just a more embarrassingly-named E3. It looks like the “invitation-only” conference aims to focus on where video games connect to other fields, with the event’s website saying that “iicon promises to bring together a broad spectrum of sectors that converge with interactive entertainment, including film, television, and music, as well as sports, healthcare, education, finance, and more.” The site promises that “attendees will gain exclusive access to visionary keynotes, engaging discussions and workshops, and elite networking opportunities,” which would suggest more of a DICE or GDC-style event than E3’s presentations and show floor.
The press release quotes several game industry execs sweatily insisting that video games are interesting to fields outside of video games. “The games industry is constantly evolving, and the intersection with other disciplines is more pronounced than ever before,” says Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann. Ubisoft’s Laurent Detoc says that “video games push the boundaries of technology and creativity, extending far beyond entertainment.” With companies like Warner Bros. and Sony desperately trying to turn their games into everything that isn’t games in order to make lines across the world go up, it feels like iicon is an attempt to pivot away from E3’s gamer reputation, with the iicon site encouraging potential attendees to go “beyond entertainment” and “align your brand with a rapidly growing industry… being used to drive positive growth in the areas that matter most.”
E3, which began in 1995, was officially cancelled in 2023, after several years of decline and the impact of covid on the games industry and live events. Geoff Keighley has done his best to give E3 a run for its money and fill the space left by its absence, with the leg up of “Keigh-3” being a much more fun name than “iicon.”
