This was supposed to be the year, after industry setbacks and a global pandemic, that E3—once the brightest centre of the video game universe—came back “recognizably epic” as a live show for the first time since 2019. Reports today indicate, however, that it will be doing so without any of the console industry’s power players.
Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger
Share SubtitlesOffEnglishShare this VideoFacebookTwitterEmailRedditLinkview videoThank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger
A story on IGN this evening says “all three of gaming’s first-party console manufacturers appear poised to skip E3's big return”, meaning that for the first time in the live show’s history not a single one of them will be at an event that was traditionally their highlight of the whole damn year.
Update 2/24/23 12:17 p.m. ET: A spokesperson for Nintendo confirmed to Kotaku that it would not be attending E3 2023 because the event “didn’t fit into our plans,” but doesn’t rule out attending in the future:
While this is a definitive final straw for E3, this has been coming for a while. Nintendo stopped holding big E3 press conferences ten years ago (though the company had a showroom floor presence at the last live show in 2019), and Microsoft and Bethesda recently pivoted to holding their own showcases alongside the E3 festivities. Sony also began passing on E3 stuff a few years back.
While Microsoft won’t be at any official E3 events, boss Phil Spencer says that, as they’ve done the last few years, Xbox will in 2023 be doing stuff alongside E3 so that any press and industry folks in town for that show will be around for theirs as well. It’s not known what Nintendo and Sony will be doing in E3's stead, if anything, though Geoff Keighley’s rival Summer Games Fest will be taking place at roughly the same time.
It’s important to note here that this isn’t the same E3 as the olden days. Events specialists ReedPop took over planning of the show last year, and said:
How they’re going to be “recognizably epic” without any major platform holder in attendance is anyone’s guess, though ReedPop did say in a statement to IGN that:
