Update: VGC has spotted that the Board of Los Angeles Convention and Tourism Development Commission has listed E3 2021 as a “cancelled live event”.
Original Story [Mon 8th Feb, 2021 20:45 GMT]: The Entertainment Software Association announced last year that they would go digital for E3 2021, which will take place between the 15th and the 17th of June. Now, amid questions on what the future of games conferences will be, they have discussed their plans for this year.
Every summer since 1995, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as "E3", has taken place in the US. It's one of the biggest gaming conventions in the world, widely attended by games press, and is usually one of the main times and places where new announcements, reveals, and trailers can be seen for the first time.
For many of those years, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft shared the stage as presenters, but over time, various publishers have pulled back from it. In 2013, Nintendo switched to pre-recorded video announcements, Direct-style, rather than on-stage press conferences; EA, Sony, Ubisoft, Activision, and Bethesda followed suit in the following years, with some studios holding their own conferences instead of having them hosted by E3.
Last year was the first time that E3 failed to materialise, due to the pandemic reaching critical mass during the planning stages. Despite initial plans to hold a digital version, there wasn't enough time to make it work, leading to the cancellation of the whole thing.
Thanks to a report from VGC, we know that the three-day event will involve live-streamed coverage from 10am to 10pm EST, including two-hour-long keynote presentations from "games partners" - likely meaning large development studios - and smaller streams from publishers, indies, and influencers. "Regional replays" across Europe, China, and the Middle East will ensure that no one misses out on the news.
Game demos will be made available to the public in the weeks before the event, and media will be able to preview the games remotely. On the 14th June, the day before E3 is due to begin, a "Preview Night" will be happening, although there are currently no details as to what that means.
Geoff Keighley - former E3 collaborator and host of The Game Awards - is planning to continue his Summer Game Fest, which he launched last year, with a cryptic tweet today signalling more news incoming:
VGC states that it's not yet clear which publishers have signed up for this digital version of E3, but that "at least one major games company" is going ahead with their own showcase, rather than paying "six-figure sums" to appear at E3.
Do you think an all-digital show is the way forward? Would you prefer to see this in future years, even after we've kicked the pandemic's butt? Let us know in the comments.
[source videogameschronicle.com]
Comments 78
This is now the most pointless show ever, the last was the worst I've ever watched, I think it's time to say goodbye to E3
Well, ain't that some stuff?
I'm honestly surprised that this is happening. And so begins all the rabid speculation as to what Nintendo will do. Yippee...
I would like our “holiday for games” back. I could live with an all digital event, altough the ambiance from live showes is also part of the fun.
I am calling it now. The first teaser for MP4 will be shown at the E3 digital event.
@UltimateOtaku91
E3 didn't happen last year.
E3 has basically been all digital for anyone not attending. I just hope it can live up to how exciting it usually is. The Summer Game Fest was a poor replacement as it lacked the reveals and it being all spread out made it easy to lose interest.
I think enough studios will go with Summer Game Fest instead that E3 is cancelled. Then Nintendo only has Partner Showcases and Indie World during the summer like last year.
@michellelynn0976 Mario Party 4 came out years ago
I want E3 still because I think its the only way we will get the big nintendo directs we crave, I wouldn't mind having the rest of the year be twitter drops but I still want the one big direct
@dannym2091 Lol that almost got me
I'm ok with digital E3. I prefer it, if it means less corporate heads trying to bro-out on stage with their sales pitches. That's always such a turn off to me.
@UltimateOtaku91 Last years E3 was so bad that it didn't even exist
@OnlyItsMeReid I'd love a remake probably my favourite mario party
@mariomaster96 I meant the last one 😂
@michellelynn0976 you know what, from the argument about ports on the other article, I'm about to contradict myself by saying this but seeing as I've never played a Metroid game I'd like a Metroid prime trilogy port/remaster first
No one cares. This show is useless.
I've come to prefer the random Twitter drops, honestly. I feel like the E3 hype cycle appeals more to the younger crowd, anyway. E3 can disappear for all I care, but I recognize and appreciate that most others feel differently. As long as one person out there is still excited for E3, that's enough justification to keep it going!
@UltimateOtaku91 Depends if you count Nintendos E3 Direct as a part of the E3, cause this direct was the best one ever imo (BotW2, Banjo and Hero for Smash, TW3 Switch port, first real Animal Crossing trailer, A trailer for FE:TH which got me very hyped etc)
But yeah, beside that it was underwhelming
@dannym2091 Oh har har. 😂😂
@UltimateOtaku91 You are in for a treat. Metroid Prime is one of the best games I've ever played.
@mariomaster96 the BOTW2 trailer got people hyped but it dudnt do it for me, too short and no gameplay, not interested in animal crossing much but yeah witcher 3 and fire emblem were the highlights for me.
The rest of the actual e3 presentations were boring and had more talking about mobile games and giving thank yous to fans and that horrible Rage 2 presentation
@michellelynn0976 but surely il need to play the trilogy first
I didn't think they would do it, SSBU NEWS BABY!
i like having e3 to look forward to, but honestly it's kind of starting to feel irrelevant.
As long as it's 3 straight days of reveals, news, trailers, it doesn't bother me at all thats its digital. I'm really looking forward to tuning in for e3 this year.
@UltimateOtaku91. You'll have a blast.
Ngl, Summer Games Fest by Geoff Keighley was so lame, I wanted E3 to come back.
I guess we'll see how this one turns out 🤷
Yes,
Give me three big fat days of gaming news. So we can take a few days off of work, write all release dates down in our agendas, pinpoint all exciting new games we’re interested in in our watchlists and download all available nows on our consoles and pc.
And after that amazing week be done with it.
Way better than the too spread out event that was summer of gaming.
I'm not interested unless Nintendo will have their digital showcase
And they didn't do a digital alternative last year because...?
I'm ok with digital E3. I prefer it, if it means less corporate heads trying to bro-out on stage with their sales pitches. That's always such a turn off to me.
@WoomyNNYes I don't know... it showed precisely how cynical and out of touch they were. I mean, as cryptic, Japanese and unpredictable as Nintendo is, their representatives have rarely acted so ham-fistedly.
From Don Mattrick saying "let them eat cake (X360)" to Ken Kutaragi telling people to work longer hours in order to buy a PS3, this event has certainly been revealing.
Why would you pay a six figure sum if you could just release your own video at the same time
@JuiceMan_V My thoughts exactly. I didn't think anything could be worse than E3. Boy, did the dorito pope prove me wrong!
I will get excited for this if Nintendo opts in, otherwise Idc.
@michellelynn0976 Speculation ruins events like this. Either people are disappointed that the speculation was wrong or the excitement is gone because they saw what they expected to see.
Don't really care about the format as long as we get a big direct.
@WoomyNNYes MS and Bethesda (assuming they're having separate conferences until the buyout is fully done) are going to be hard pressed to keep their usual antics to a minimum. Phil's gotta limit his talk about gamers rising up, Sarah's gonna intro the GP demo reel, and Todd won't get a hundred drunken neckbeards WOOing at him when he announces that dragons are coming to Wolfenstein 3. Might not even get the random car on a stage either.
@WoomyNNYes That's probably why I like Nintendo's presentations or even Nintendo in general... It's not full of nerds who are insecure about their masculinity.. just nerds..
And everyone said E3 was dead. There it is.
Really excited. Honestly nothing beats the hype that E3 brings every year. Just a week of rapid fire announcements every day from the biggest players in the industry. I simply can't understand why people would want it to die.
Maybe that's when nintendo will share something....
@YoshiTails
...of any of a number of logistical factors we can only hope to imagine.
E3 may be expensive, but Nintendo always makes the most of it every year. Taking the grand finale of game reveals through a Direct, followed by a couple of consecutive days of Nintendo Treehouse streaming a bunch of gameplay. E3 is still important, because it is Nintendo's biggest opportunity to shine.
If you haven't noticed, the most Nintendo has ever given us at Gamescom and Summer Game Fest was either a Partner Showcase or an Indie World Showcase. As for The Game Awards, it's Smash, "Nintendo Switch has games!" or just nothing that we're interested in.
Hopefully Nintendo actually has a showcase this year to show off titles like the inevitable Diamond/Pearl remake and Breath of the Wild 2 (even if it doesn't release this year), amongst other games.
I would prefer if E3 was all digital anyway. The fluff they always threw out before the big shows to appease the ones in attendance was never interesting to watch on stream. I look forward to E3 every year, take time off work and stream all three days so if going digital means more focus on the meat and less fluffing of the potatoes, I am very happy.
@michellelynn0976
"I am calling it now. The first teaser for MP4 will be shown at the E3 digital event."
What "MP4"?
I enjoy the big game conferences — it’s a hyper injection of cool gaming news, but spread out news, like last year, wasn’t bad either. I don’t think these developers need to pay 6 figure sums for a bit of retail space when they can deliver the news in a pre-recorded video, so I’m predicting the end of E3. Sony dropped out two years ago, EA and Microsoft have their own buildings, Bethesda got bought by Microsoft, so it really just leaves Nintendo, Ubisoft and Square Enix but I think they’ll just opt to leave as well.
If there’s game announcements, the rest of the details don’t matter to me in the slightest.
Playasia is my another hope.
I really don't understand why they don't go with cloud-gaming for the demos.I'm not interested in it for normal play, but for events like this it seems a perfect fit.
With the way the latest Direct and State of Play turned out, I wonder how good will this show be. 2020 has shown us what we can do without. E3 is one of those things.
@outsider83 Nah, I very much disagree.
One moment for the industry to come together and show what's cooking, ánd behind the doors meet up to make new collaborations is actually what we need. 2020 was very stale for every company to be honest. It needs an E3-like-moment.
@roboshort You're right. Nintendo puts mostly real people on stage and they are all nerds. Very refreshing.
E3 is mostly dead now.
With the big 3 mostly ignoring e3 in recent years, I can do the same.
Wait, e3 was happening this year?
The world hasn’t been serious about the pandemic especially the USA so it’s no surprise. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was digital only again next year. There’s talk it’ll be another year or two till developing nations get the vaccines that’s more than enough time for the virus to mutate complete resistance to the current vaccines.
I mean...yeah. Seems about right.
And all because of a disease with a less than 0.5% fatality rate. When did humans become so collectively stupid?
When did we ever think live E3 was happening. There's enough debate about the olympics in August even with limited attendance let along a live convention in early June. They've been talking about the digital show for months now.
I just hope that actually exists and publishers don't seem enthused. Even Reggie isn't pleased. And he doesn't even work in the industry anymore.
@NEStalgia I would like to see a source
@Mountain_Man That's a bit insensitive to anyone affected by the pandemic. Lost lives are lost lives, no matter the count, and even then, people have lost lots of money from this pandemic. So yes, it's pathetic that the ESA can barely release a single event when smaller companies can do what they're doing. But bringing up the fatality rate was extremely unnecessary. And even if you don't die from this virus, it could leave long-lasting damages.
@HotGoomba It's not insensitive at all. Someone in the world dies from something every second of every day. Should we all isolate ourselves and refrain from human contact under the futile belief that we can somehow stop death? Living in fear is no way to live, especially not when we're talking about a disease that is, on the whole, less dangerous than the common flu.
@Mountain_Man You might not get affected by this, but older people get seriously sick from the virus, and the "someone dies every second" argument is poor as they're almost always preventable. With that logic, we shouldn't care about equal rights, or fair pay, or work conditions, or genocide, gun violence, suicide and suicidal thoughts, and hate speech, because hey, we're all gonna die anyways? why the hell should we care!? death is inevitable, we can't stop it, there will always be awful people, we all have to accept it, and 1% of us will be remembered by many when we die. who cares?
When everything is just a digital presentation, then there really is no need for them to be a part of some larger event. I'm sure Nintendo and Sony will have a Direct and State of Play scheduled respectively around that time in June regardless. Likewise for Microsoft and whatever they call their digital showcases.
@Wolfgabe A source for what?
@duffmann Organizing it together within a single time window still has tons of value as combined industry marketing (which is ESA's job as an industry group.) In a way this whole thing is a subtext of a larger debate of should the games industry have an industry association for combining resources for promoting the industry as a whole (the ESA) or should it be everyone for themselves from now on? Sony already made that call that they're their own industry and they need no one else. But that could be detrimental to a lot of the industry if the big players all go that way. I suspect MS is willing to throw some weight around to be the developer-friendly one and make a show of it. I'd be shocked if MS weren't participating in new-fake E3.
@HotGoomba "...older people get seriously sick from the virus..."
Older people get seriously sick from all sorts of things. Always have. It's one of the things that sucks about getting older. People who are particularly vulnerable to illness should stay away from large public gatherings, but that has always been good advice even before we had ever heard of the Chinese coronavirus. There's no sense disrupting the lives and livelihoods of everybody else because of it.
Eh, it's not gonna be atrocious. Probably just ok
Nintendo won't do much and stick to directs for at least this year
@Mountain_Man Couldn't agree more. Logic and reason on the internet today is a rare breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, it is also one that is often wasted on some. Think many to most, who assuredly and unironically consider themselves to be "believers of science" to use the talking point, are more interested in simply shutting down the planet repeatedly with the belief that doing so will somehow make the 2020ism for the common flu simply disappear (which is neither a solution nor based in science).
@UltimateOtaku91 No, no you're both wrong. mp4. is a type of video file.
@Menardi @Mountain_Man Honestly I'm just the kind of person who would rather be safe than sorry. If I sounded like an idiot with my previous comments, sorry, I'm just extremely paranoid with these kind of viruses. Also is it really disrupting lives if you could probably get away with going outside wearing a mask and living your life mostly the way it's been before? Unless you're an Anti-Masker, but I'm tired of talking about those people.
@HotGoomba "I'm just extremely paranoid..."
That's not by accident. Governments around the world have been deliberately stoking fears of the China virus in order to increase their control of the population. What scares me is how easily and willingly the people have gone along with it. We live in interesting times.
@HotGoomba I understand how it is, think it's very easy today to separate ourselves into opposing tribes when we are all simply well-intentioned people doing the best we can with what we're given. Not "anti-maskers" or "libtards" or whatever the given epithet is: people.
What @Mountain_Man says in his follow-up comment is entirely true, and not without precedent. Think of the various pushes towards tyranny that occured with the best of intentions post 9/11, such as the Patriot Act. Fast forward ten years, and the United States government is suddenly abusing obscure case law from the seventies through the third-party doctrine to bulk collect and surveil the online communications of American citizens without a warrant, hence Edward Snowden. In bolder times, this would have been considered unconstitutional (and still would be if the United States were still conceptually existent as she was designed today). Sometimes the worst things begin with the best intentions, and the various actions, and occasional inaction, of western and eastern governments in response to the Chinese SARS-CoV-2 virus are no exception.
Live events like E3 are simply one of the many casualties of times like these, as dead as this particular event already was. This is how business owners, such as restaurant owners, are forced to spend out of pocket to implement outdoor dining areas to comply with ever-changing state-mandated "rules," but are then shut down anyway, while catering companies contracted by film studios set up identical outdoor dining areas for film shoots in the adjacent parking lot; which is something that actually happened in California this past year. The working man is punished with arbitrarily-enforced rules designed to "help" while the powers that be shake the appropriate hands and carry on.
@Menardi @Mountain_Man Alright, I'm gonna go from this conversation. It's starting to get too political (that's kinda the point, but, still).
@HotGoomba It's not that it's "too political", it's that the current situation is driven almost entirely by politics. People say, "The China flu is causing this!" No, it's how those in power are reacting to the China flu that is causing it.
@NEStalgia Reggie not being pleased
@Wolfgabe https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/02/reggie_wants_e3_and_platform_holders_to_find_a_way_to_digitally_enable_fans
"not compelling" was the businessspeak he used, but basically he dislikes the current E3 digital plans shown to him.
@Mountain_Man I know I said I was leaving the conv, but why do you keep on calling it "the China virus" instead of "Covid-19" or "coronavirus" or "scientific bs"? I obviously know that it can from China, but why that name specifically?
@HotGoomba "I obviously know that it [came] from China, but why that name specifically?"
You answered your own question.
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