The biggest trade show in video games is skipping a year. E3 2020, which was planned to take place at the Los Angeles Convention Centre this June, is cancelled as a result of the Covid-19 coronavirus that is currently spreading across the globe, the organisers of the conference said today.
“After careful consultation with our member companies regarding the health and safety of everyone in our industry”our fans, our employees, our exhibitors and our longtime E3 partners”we have made the difficult decision to cancel E3 2020, scheduled for June 9-11 in Los Angeles,” the Entertainment Software Association, the video game lobbyist group that runs the trade show, said in a statement to press this morning.
The ESA added that it will be looking “to coordinate an online experience to showcase industry announcements and news in June 2020.” Traditionally, E3 has two parts. During the first few days of the show, from Saturday through Monday, major video game publishers like Microsoft and Ubisoft hold press conferences to showcase trailers announce their latest games, while from Tuesday through Thursday, the show floor opens for business deals and video game demos. The first part will be far easier to replicate than the second. Microsoft has already announced an Xbox digital event for this year, as has Ubisoft.
E3 has always been an important moment for Team Xbox. Given this decision, this year we’ll celebrate the next generation of gaming with the @Xbox community and all who love to play via an Xbox digital event. Details on timing and more in the coming weeks https://t.co/xckMKBPf9h
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) March 11, 2020
This year, a newcomer planned to enter the field. Warner Bros. Games was preparing to host an E3 press conference for the first time, according to three people familiar with the publisher’s plans. There, WB Games had planned to talk about a number of much-anticipated games including a new Batman, a Harry Potter game that had leaked in 2018, and the next game from Arkham developers Rocksteady Studios. It remains to be seen whether Warner Bros. will instead hold its own digital event or do something else entirely.
E3, which has been running in various forms since 1995, has been dealing with an existential crisis this year. After years of operating as an industry-only event, the show opened to the public in 2017, selling thousands of fans on the fantasy of getting to play games early. The ESA found itself entangled in conflicts with a number of parties, though, including Sony, which skipped E3 last year and planned to do the same in 2020 even before the coronavirus scare. Many pundits and observers have speculated that E3 needed some sort of revitalization to stay relevant in the digital era.
It’s been a bad year for the ESA. Last year, E3 leaked the personal information of thousands of journalists. Earlier this year, video game personality Geoff Keighley announced that he would be skipping the show, where he has traditionally hosted an event called the E3 Coliseum, full of panels and interviews. And just last week, E3 creative director iam8bit also pulled out of the show for reasons that appeared unrelated to the coronavirus.
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5 responses to “E3 2020 Officially Cancelled”
The biggest show is cancelled? TGS? GDC? PAX? It hasn’t been E3 for years.
E3 has been progressively less and less important each year for a decade. used to be exciting. the last few I didn’t pay attention to until they’d be over for a week already.
This could work out okay for those of us who don’t attend. Should get some great digital events in place of E3
Well there you go E3 2020 has been officially cancelled due to coronavirus fear that is spreading all over the globe I just hope the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games will be given the go ahead by the IOC and if not then they will have no choice but to cancel the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Well I guess we’ll just have to sit out this year’s E3 until next year in 2021.
This is certainly proving an excellent measure of which organizations are capable of competent pattern recognition and extrapolation.
“We know everyone’s cancelling everything everywhere, and they’re doing it not independently off their own gut instinct, but on the basis of expert advice from the best-informed professionals and the governing body for this response, but we’re going to ignore the decisions they’ve made and cross our fingers that we won’t have to make similar decisions to what they have, because man it’d be fucking expensive to have to do that. So, everyone involved should keep committing financially to this totally-not-a-mistake conven– oh. What’s that? We have to do what everyone else is doing after all? WELL FUCK. THAT IS SUCH A HUGE SURPRISE. I SURE HOPE NO-ONE SPENT ANY MORE MONEY THAT THEY CAN’T GET BACK.”
Well, at least Anime Festival Sydney 2020 was last weekend so only half the guests couldn’t make it. (Naturally the half I wanted to see)
Today has been just a constant run of ‘everything is cancelled everywhere!’