E3 was at one time a staple event for the video game industry. It was also necessary as it allowed media to venture into one space and gather details of what would come into the marketplace. Of course, over the years, it continued to evolve and become a more public venture. Media conferences would hold exciting showcases of future video games and hardware that would be launching into the market in the coming months to years. However, these past several years, things started to simmer down drastically. We saw Nintendo and Sony drop the media conferences in favor of a smaller stream showcase.
Then we had the pandemic, which prompted the entire expo to get canceled or move into a digital-only event. Now it’s looking like the expo days may be numbered as more companies are falling out of attending the expo altogether. We knew that this year’s E3 event wouldn’t feature the likes of Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft. However, since then, it was unveiled that Ubisoft, another major player in the video game industry, is also leaving the E3 expo behind for its own online stream showcase. Today, it looks like a couple of more companies are opting to do the very same thing.
IGN has reported that both Sega and Tencent will be skipping E3 2023, and there are rumors we might not see E3 2023 at all. It’s looking more like this event might be a complete bust, with the focus going toward the smaller stream showcases rather than in-person conferences and media-only events. While there are rumors of more publishers following this trend of leaving E3 behind this year and potentially forever, we haven’t seen any additional confirmations from other companies. But with Ubisoft, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Tencent, and Sega all leaving the expo, it’s not looking good for fans wanting to attend.
Of course, even if E3 2023 doesn’t happen, there are still plenty of events and even streams that companies typically hold for fans. For instance, Ubisoft unveiled that while they won’t be at E3 2023, they will still have a Ubisoft Forward stream event this June. That should likely follow with several other companies this June as they prepare their own showcases of what’s to come for the rest of this year and likely in 2024. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see if there are any more confirmations of companies leaving E3 behind, along with if there are still plans to hold the expo this year.
