Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft will not attend the E3 convention in June 2023, as it became known this morning. Just as E3 will go back to being a face-to-face conference in Los Angeles after not being held in 2022, the big three in the industry have decided to spend another year.
The fair from June 13 to 16, 2023 will be held, there is no doubt about that, but we will have to wait for the remaining developers to say if they are going to go or not. In the worst case, this fair will remain as an exhibitor of upcoming games and technology, instead of an announcement fair.
The worst thing is that we saw it coming. Sony first jumped ship at E3 in 2019 and hasn’t been a part of the convention since. Microsoft said last week that it would hold a showcase in Los Angeles this summer, but did not directly say the words E3.
Nintendo has proven time and time again that it can make big, long-awaited announcements with its must-see presentations known as the Nintendo Direct, so it may not feel the need to share the E3 spotlight with other companies.
The other fairs, celebrations and galas that have replaced the traditional E3
As E3 has grown smaller, new other digital stages for developers and publishers to make their big announcementsincluding The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest, both hosted by industry veteran Geoff Keighley.
But it is not the only event, since Gamescom in Cologne (Germany) has gained a lot of weight in recent years, as has Tokyo Game Show (Japan).
Video game fairs make sense from the point of view that fans and potential customers demand them. They like fairs, they are access points to games, consoles and technologies that are about to come out and the ideal way to take users’ temperatures.
An E3 makes sense if they manage to make it interesting for the general public, and that is the job of the organizers of the Los Angeles fair. Large companies are very comfortable deciding how, when and in what form their games are shown without having to compete with the competition. But there the users lose out.
