Nintendo has cancelled a few of their live events in Japan, and the reasons are definitely disappointing.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, both the Splatoon Koshien 2023 National Finals, which was coming this December 16-17, 2023, and Nintendo Live 2024, which was happening on January 20-21, 2024, are no longer going ahead as planned.
The company revealed that employees have been receiving persistent threats, and those threats started to also be made against attendees and the event staff themselves. Because Nintendo was not ready to secure the safety of attendees for these events, they have decided to cancel both events.
Nintendo Live 2024 was also to be the venue for the Splatoon 3 World Championship 2024, the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Online Challenge Final Stage, and the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe World Championship 2024. All of these events are to be rescheduled to a later date.
The Nintendo Live events are a combination of gaming tournaments, live performances, gameplay demos, and other activities. It was a reimagining of Nintendo’s events to be a one-size-fits-all event, following the easing of pandemic measures in 2022.
This is the information that we have for now, but it is certainly unfortunate that Nintendo has been dealing with threats that the rest of the world did not know about for some time now.
It certainly brings to mind an incident all the way back in 2015, when authorities were able to track down and stop two suspects from plans to attack a Pokemon World Championships event. That incident could have brought an immediate stop to similar events. In this case, the authorities were able to demonstrate that they could keep such events safe.
Of course, Nintendo is not the only video game company to host live events of this nature. But they are uniquely positioned to be twice as careful and responsible as other companies. That’s because their games are made for a younger audience, and attract families. Their live events similarly skew towards that demographic.
Nintendo has an illustrious and also quirky history with live events. After producing a film called The Wizard, which had a fictional depiction of a video game tournament using the NES, Nintendo launched one such event in America. We know this now as the Nintendo World Championships. In succeeding years, they followed this up with similarly themed tournaments, such as the Nintendo Campus Challenge and Nintendo PowerFest events.
Nintendo revived the most resonant of these event brands, the Nintendo World Championships, in 2015 and 2017. But if they face similar issues in the future, they may not be able to bring it back, nor can they return Nintendo Live.
