E3 2023 will not happen! The news that arrived last night (March 30) left us all with a bad taste in our mouths and once again orphans of the demonstration. In our opinion, however, something was already in the air, a sensation determined by the recent (and additional) abandonments of Ubisoft, SEGA and Devolver Digital. It had been years since the Los Angeles fair had lost its former glory, yet many of us hoped for its resurrection. Instead, E3 may never return from its ashes, belying the myth of the phoenix. But what determined the cancellation of the 2023 edition and the possible farewell of E3 as we knew it? We have come up with a couple of ideas that we are going to share below!
E3 2023: the farewell of the big names!
In the beginning it was Sony Interactive Entertainment, and then the others! This is how we open this paragraph, because Sony was the first big name to decide to boycott E3, staging its own presentations by removing the “stamp” of the American fair. Despite this, E3 went ahead even without the Japanese company, anchoring itself to the other big names in the sector, vedi Microsoft e Bethesda, Nintendo Ubisoft, Electronic Arts (and others). Gradually, however, other publishers have decided to follow Sony, deciding that it was not worth investing time and above all money in a now dying fair.
This year then there was the great exodus (and soon we’ll see where), with the very big names in the gaming industry who said “no thanks, this year we’ll pass!”. And we are very sorry dear ESA and dear organizers of the event, but it is not possible to do an E3 without Sony, Microsoft, Bethesda, Nintendo, Ubisoft, SEGA, Electronic Arts, without even those wags of Devolver Digital, and even without Tencent. Therefore, in our opinion, all these defections were one of the main reasons that forced ESA to issue the sad announcement, but as mentioned before, there are 2 other factors that determined the loss of “power” of E3 in these last years!
I don’t think it makes sense to talk about Console War anymore, it would be more appropriate to start talking about gaming awareness.
Geoff Keighley e il Summer Game Fest
No, let’s not point the finger at Geoff Keighley and no one will ever say that his Summer Game Fest took away the light and shadowed E3. But it cannot be denied that in recent years, and this year more than ever, the big publishers have decided to prefer the Canadian presenter’s event to the now moribund E3. And let’s go back to invoking the previous names: Sony, Microsoft and Bethesda, SEGA, Devolver Digital and all the most important (and not) names in the sector have thus decided to offer their showcases under the Summer Game Fest labelgoing to magnify what was born as a filler during the pandemic, i.e. during 2020, the first year in which E3 was canceled due to Covid-19.
So, like it or not this year the good Geoff has given his substantial contribution to the cancellation of E3given that in simple terms, it took over almost the entire gaming industry in the month of June, going to make a more than ruthless competition at the Los Angeles fair, which unlike last year failed to bear the impact and was forced into cancellation… and probably into extinction!
Yes, too many events were born!
Summer Game Fest isn’t the only event born during the pandemic. In 2020, to plug the immense hole left by the cancellation of E3 2020, many digital events were born which over the years have repeated livestreaming. In addition to the already too many times mentioned Summer Game Fest, how can we forget the Summer of Gaming, the Future Games Show, the Play for All, the PC Gaming Showwhile even the big publishers slowly decided to create their own personal events: State of Play e PlayStation Showcase by Sony, Ubisoft Forward, EA Play Live di Electronic Arts, Square Enix Presents, Xbox Developer Direct, Capcom Showcase. And it must be said that many of these events were born right under the E3 label, and only later did the publishers decide to manage them independently!
So, the times when E3 dominated the summer scene had been over for several years now and what happened this year was nothing but a point of no return that will change the gaming industry forever. Before saying goodbye, however, we want to leave you with a very important question: it was better before when there was only E3 and all the publishers took part in it, or are there those who prefer the very confusing new videogame summer full of digital events that are now sprouting like mushrooms?
