After Sony, Xbox and Nintendo, it’s Bethesda’s turn to announce its absence from E3 2023. The publisher plans to organize its own event on June 12.
[Mis à jour le 31 janvier 2023 à 15h25] This is news that is hitting the biggest video game fair in history hard. While 2023 was supposed to mark the return of E3 to the Los Angeles Convention Center with great fanfare, after four editions canceled or strictly streamed online, it appears to be snubbed by Xbox, Sony and Nintendo and now Bethesda. It’s no surprise that the brand’s partner at X is also missing the show after the rumors about Xbox’s absence, a huge blow to what was to be the big comeback of E3.
To start these few lines, you should know that for Nintendo and Sony, this information has in no way been confirmed by the show, but it is increasingly doubtful that Nintendo, Sony and Xbox have decided to participate in the show of E3 2023. The three video game behemoths would have opted for the organization of their own events, in the form of broadcast evenings exclusively reserved for their products. This is already the case for Xbox and Bethesda who have planned their own event, the Ubisoft Forward Live.
Recently, despite a few words of reassurance from Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, saying his company would do “everything to make E3 a success” as a member of theESA (Entertainment Software Association) and loyal supporter of the show, the presence of the green giant at the Los Angeles Convention Center seemed compromised. It must be said that the Microsoft firm recently laid off en masse after having denied all the rumors of layoffs that were circulating on the web, and poses as the champion of the ultimately erroneous assertions, which was confirmed once again after the announcement. of the Ubisoft Forward Live 2023 conference.
Because today, this event was announced via a press release sent to VGC. Xbox and Bethesda have said they want to “move in a different direction” and hold their own show on June 12. E3 takes a hit from which it will be difficult to recover since the Ubisoft Forward Live will also take place in Los Angeles in June, at the same time as the three-E show, and it means the absence of one of the three largest publishers in the world.
It must be said that the event suffered particularly from organizational problems during the coronavirus pandemic, and experienced many changes of organizers. Add to that the rise of the Summer Game Fest, which directly competes with E3 on the exclusivity of certain revelations, and you will have a commercial, organizational and competitive cocktail that may be right for the legendary video game fair in 2024.
E3 2023 is scheduled for June 13-16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The good news is that E3 has confirmed they want to re-associate with “publishers, developers, journalists, content creators, manufacturers, buyers and license ownersto organize next year’s edition. So we will see the return of this legendary conference to the Los Angeles Convention Center, although such an exhibition without Xbox, Nintendo or Sony would have a particularly strange taste.
For the moment, we do not yet know the exact program of E3 2023. Although Sony, Xbox and Nintendo seem to be moving away from the show for their summer video game season, there are still a number of exhibitors who should take advantage of the absence of the three giants to take center stage at E3. We can think of Square Enix and its Final Fantasy 16 scheduled for this summer, and other exhibitors such as Ubisoft, Rockstar and Electronic Arts, although the latter traditionally prefers to organize its own event.