E3 boss interview — Stanley Pierre-Louis says show floor is sold out, 65,000 people expected

Just a short time ago, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was a video game trade show in crisis. Longtime CEO Mike Gallagher of the Entertainment Software Association, which runs the E3 video game show, resigned in October. Sony pulled out of E3 for the first time in 24 years, even as it started preparing for the launch of the PlayStation 5. And both Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard confirmed that they wouldn’t have large booths at the show.

But when the show opens next week (starting Saturday with publisher events and Tuesday for the main shindig), the show floor will be sold out, according to Stanley Pierre-Louis, the new CEO of the ESA. He’s the former general counsel for the ESA, the game industry’s trade group. This means that companies such as Epic Games (maker of Fortnite), Oculus VR, esports vendors, and others have soaked up the space that the big companies have abandoned in recent years. And in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat, Pierre-Louis reiterated that the show should draw about 65,000 people, about the same as last year.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.