E3 2023 will look a bit different this year as all the major game publishers take a gap year and sit out the summer game mess.
Three of the biggest gaming companies in the world will all be absent from this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). PlayStation (Sony), Xbox, and Nintendo will all skip the event, which is the first to happen in person since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, according to a report from IGN.
"IGN has heard from multiple knowledgeable sources that Xbox, Sony, and Nintendo won't be part of E3 2023 or have a presence on the Los Angeles Convention Center showfloor," the report says.
The event will still go ahead from June 13-16. It will include two industry days where people in the media get access to press conferences and then two days of one of the biggest gaming conventions in the world.
Why is this important?
E3 has been a cornerstone of all gaming communities for years. The history of the event stretches all the way back to 1995, when the first iteration of the expo was held. Since then, some of the biggest gaming reveals, announcements and trailers have all come from the event.
Bethesda Director Todd Howard legendarily announced Fallout 4 at E3 in 2015. Sony revealed the first PlayStation console at the event in 1999. Without the publicity and these events, both of those releases may have been very different.
Not all of those announcements have been good ones, with XBOX revealing the XBOX KINECT at the 2009 event. KINECT ended up being a peripheral that was sold with all second generation XBOX 360 consoles with very little success.
Even still, E3 has been closely tied to the gaming scene for nearly three decades, and these massive companies moving away from it is a huge knock in the history of gaming.
Nearly 67,000 people attended the last in-person E3 event in 2019. People from all over the world flew in to Los Angeles for that event and now the three biggest draws of it are gone.
Why have PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox left E3?
Over the the course of the pandemic, all three of these big companies have transitioned into hosting their own events for their own announcements. They are all trying to be the center of attention for their own event rather than sharing the space with everyone else.
PlayStation were the first to drop out from the E3 showcase, doing so before the 2019 event. Sony reportedly had disagreements with the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the company that hosts E3.
The ESA are no longer running E3. ReedPop, organiser of PAX events are now in charge. The damage seems to be done for PlayStation and Sony. They will not return to the event this year and will instead host their own showcase.
Nintendo has repeatedly proven that it can deal with big news items completely independently. Their Nintendo Direct series of announcement videos has been perfect for the transitioning gaming landscape.
Microsoft have been holding their own conferences and did so in 2022, given the complete lack of E3 event. They will do the same this year, and will have their event coincide closely with E3 in the gaming calendar.
So what next for E3?
As Freddie Mercury once said, the show must go on (for E3). The expo will still take place in Los Angeles this summer and it will still be a fantastic celebration of all things gaming.
E3 will still draw huge numbers this year, with the first in-person event since Covid being a huge selling point. Gamers will travel from all corners of the globe in order to be there and share in their passions. Being able to be in a room with 60,000 like-minded people is a unique opportunity and E3 has provided that for years.
It is a shame that the biggest companies will not be doing their traditional press conferences at the event but there is still hope for it to be a more than memorable occasion.
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