As rumours predicted, E3 has formally been cancelled. Like all the opposite occasions cancelled just lately, it’s all the way down to well being issues over the Covid-19 coronavirus. The highest-profile advertising occasion of the games trade calendar is binned.
“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,” the Entertainment Software Association stated in the present day. They do say they’re contemplating a web-based present for all the massive bulletins, although I’m positive we’d nonetheless hear all of them if not.
“Following increased and overwhelming concerns about the COVID-19 virus, we felt this was the best way to proceed during such an unprecedented global situation,” the ESA say on “E3’s site. “We are very upset that we’re unable to carry this occasion for our followers and supporters. But we all know it’s the suitable resolution based mostly on the knowledge now we have in the present day.”
Should the ESA not get plans for a giant on-line announce-o-rama collectively, we’ll absolutely nonetheless hear all of them. The huge publishers host their very own livestreamed displays anyway, and I don’t know why they’d cease now. It’s additionally change into frequent for firms to submit movies of E3 demos that after have been proven behind closed doorways to press. For individuals who don’t attend the expo, solely observe alongside at residence, this 12 months’s E3 might largely be the identical. With a bizarre tone.
They are at present planning for a bodily occasion to return subsequent 12 months. I’d actually be a bit shocked if taking a break doesn’t trigger E3 to lose its inertia and fall over. It is a bit 90s, decreasingly helpful in a web-based period. Which might be why the ESA are attempting to make E3 extra of a public occasion for followers, not only a commerce present.
“We look forward to bringing you E3 2021 as a reimagined event that brings fans, media, and the industry together in a showcase that celebrates the global video game industry,” they stated in the present day. We’ll see, aye.
This 12 months’s present was supposed to be a giant revamp of the expo expertise. The ESA stated they have been “collaborating with industry insiders and new creative partners, including the tastemakers at Iam8bit, to reinvigorate the show and, frankly, to shake things up.” Well, the merchmakers at Iam8bit resigned their roles earlier this month, which didn’t give the impression it was going nice. E3 mainstay Geoff Keighley was additionally skipping it.
