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E3

E3 2020 Has Been Canceled (arstechnica.com) 40

Posted by msmash from the another-casualty dept.
E3 2020 as we know it is over. From a report: Multiple sources familiar with the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)'s plans have confirmed to Ars Technica that the organization, which is responsible for the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), will soon cancel the three-day expo. Like in prior years, E3 2020 was scheduled to play out in early June as a three-day event at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Shortly after we received the tip, indie game publisher Devolver Digital posted a brief, ominous message on Twitter: "Cancel your E3 flights and hotels, y'all." The ESA had not made any announcements about E3 2020 at that time.

One source who spoke to Ars on background said they'd heard the news of E3 2020's cancellation "directly from ESA members" and that an official, public statement on the matter "was supposed to be today [Tuesday, March 10] and slipped." Representatives for the ESA did not immediately respond to Ars Technica's questions about the state of E3 going forward or whether the event's seismic shift may instead mean a delay, a move to a completely different venue, or a wholly virtualized, live-streamed event.
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E3 2020 Has Been Canceled More

E3 2020 Has Been Canceled

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  • It's a sad day for the booth babe industry...

    The rest of the world moves on, though.

    • all the lost travel. Remember it's not just E3. SXSW cancelled. They're hoping it'll just be a "postponement" because a) it puts a $350 million dollar hole in the city's income (that include lost revenue for businesses) and b) it's so large they need some of the money from last year to run next year, meaning if it gets cancelled there won't be a next year.

      Eventually this'll mean layoffs, then less spending, then more layoffs, then even less spending. Stock prices will drop and companies will do even mor

    • The booth babes are still around, they're just wearing enviro suits now.

  • Some Face Saved (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @10:07AM (#59817892)

    Exactly why the event will be canceled is not clear at this time. Late last month, the ESA addressed concerns about the spread of coronavirus and its impact on major 2020 expos around the world by insisting that it "continue[d] to plan for a safe and successful E3" while otherwise "monitoring and evaluating" its potential impact on events held in Los Angeles.

    E3 2020 was already going to be a shell of its former self. Coronavirus would make a convenient excuse in that way.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      The real question is: will E3 return? Industry participation this year would have been rather lacking. Will next year even happen?

      • It's certainly possible and frankly I think that it could stand to get scaled back quite a bit and if that meant it could focus more on third party and independent developers and become less console-centric. At some point along the way it turned into an overly extravagant spectacle instead of a cool place for everyone to show off what they were working on and too many resources were being poured into having something flashy to show off instead of any actual games. A few years ago when I watched some of a pr

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          I'm not sure there are enough indie PC game devs interested in E3 to make a conference, these days. We're past the indie boom and bust, and we're also past the days when showing up as an indie at E3 meant any sales. E3 is still good for devs to make contacts with other devs, which is especially important for indies, but I don't think it's useful as marketing any more. Isn't the marketing focus these days on getting a relevant streamer to do a lets play?

    • Re:Some Face Saved (Score:5, Interesting)

      by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @11:08AM (#59817994)
      It went invite-only for several years, I'm sure it wouldn't have been worse than that. I think Sony opted not to attend this year several months back, but that leads me to believe they didn't think they could provide the kind of conference that would get people excited this year. And I'm irritated with Sony anyway so I wouldn't have missed them, they haven't been the same since Kaz left.

      • I think Sony opted not to attend this year several months back, but that leads me to believe they didn't think they could provide the kind of conference that would get people excited this year.

        Sony didn't attend last year either, so it wasn't exactly surprising when they announced they'd pass on this year's E3 as well.

        As for providing an exciting conference, it's not clear from your use of pronouns whether you're referring to the ESA or Sony being able to do so, but Sony certainly has the goods to bring this year if they were so inclined, given that they have a newly announced console for which they've been slowly doling out details. Being able to show off a new console (or two, given that the ne

        • Sony doesn't really have as much direct to consumer steam as Nintendo does, though. The Nintendo Directs are very popular but Sony doesn't really have anything equivalent. I can see Nintendo skipping E3, but I don't think it's the right decision for Sony to do it two years in a row. This isn't to say they couldn't do something like a Sony Direct, there's nothing preventing them from it and I think people would appreciate them doing it if they're going to skip the big conventions. I'm not really sure why the

          • Yeah, I may have given a bad read on the situation, since you're quite right that Sony doesn't have their own digital stream like Nintendo Direct. If we look at what they're actually doing, they've started leaning more into the Tokyo Game Show as they've backed off from E3 in recent years. Perhaps their departure from E3 is more about wanting to be a big fish in a smaller pond when it comes to the news? Or perhaps they prefer TGS' timing within the calendar year, since it's closer to Christmas, which means

      • It was always invite-only, it was a conference for journalists. They experimented with making it open for a while, and then changed it back when the crowds got too severe. I don't know how they've been doing it recently.

    • Exactly why the event will be canceled is not clear at this time. Late last month, the ESA addressed concerns about the spread of coronavirus and its impact on major 2020 expos around the world by insisting that it "continue[d] to plan for a safe and successful E3" while otherwise "monitoring and evaluating" its potential impact on events held in Los Angeles.

      E3 2020 was already going to be a shell of its former self. Coronavirus would make a convenient excuse in that way.

      It has been a shell of its former self. I think this year would have qualified as "shell-of-a-shell."

    • I've never been to E3, but liked to see the marketing hype by various studios and the multiple announcements often made at the expo. The bigger the studio or if the announcement is the continuation of an existing franchise, the less interested I am in the announcement as a general rule. That said, why was it going to be a shell of what it was this year? I tried googling for some information and could only find things like this [gamesindustry.biz] and this [gamespot.com]. The data seems to point to slight attendance drops and a shift from

      • I largely agree with you, but I think the publishers kinda did this to themselves.

        Cyberpunk 2077's release was super hyped last year...and its release isn't until after E3 this year.

        Anthem demos at E3 2018 were clearly nowhere near reflective of the finished product.

        Stretching it a bit to other E3-esque events, Blizzcon's Diabolo Immortal reveal was that weird combination of funny and depressing. Valve announced Artifact at The International - a new Valve game! ...also, it's a card game.

        Going back to E3 spe

    • as a trade show. Yeah, it didn't have as much glitz & glamour. But business folk were going there to network and buy product.

  • I realize that these events take months and months of planning. But that is three months from now. Contagion spread follows an exponential growth, so either it will continue to follow its trends thus far and literally every single person on the planet will be infected by then, and discounting the possibility of dual, super, and post recovery reinfections, their will be no one left to infect. Or we will have solved this epidemic well before then.

    These plague events simply are not going to be year spanning ev

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There will absolutely be billions infected and millions dead, including Betty White, Andrew Dice Clay, and several prominent musicians from 70's and 80's rock groups.

    • Re:I realize that These Events have to be Planned (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ranton ( 36917 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @11:14AM (#59818008)

      I realize that these events take months and months of planning. But that is three months from now. Contagion spread follows an exponential growth, so either it will continue to follow its trends thus far and literally every single person on the planet will be infected by then

      While you have a little hyperbole in your statement, I agree things will either be very bad in three months or the risk will have mostly subsided. Although these are just the likely outcomes, no one knows exactly how it will play out.

      My guess is the cost of cancelling an event like this gets far more expensive the more time passes. Not just for those running the E3 event, but also for those who are planning to present, advertise, etc. When my company presents at a conference, there are thousands of man-hours that go into the event. And we are only a mid-sized enterprise. If my company was informed three months ahead of time that a conference is cancelled as opposed to one month before, we would save $100k easily in direct and opportunity costs by cancelling our preparation.

      I assume cancelling now is an effort to save themselves and their partners millions by giving a large advance notice.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      China's outbreak started in January, and even with their draconian quarantine efforts they (possibly) only just got it under control in just over 2 months, but still have significant numbers of people that are still symptomatic. The outbreaks in the EU are just getting started, and the one in the US seems to be about to do the same, and I can't imagine certain segments of the US population reacting too well to the government telling them to essentially give up their freedoms, so it's very much likely to be

    • These plague events simply are not going to be year spanning events in the modern era.

      Reinfection is absolutely a possibility until a working vaccine is made so I would not discount that. Considering the family from which this virus descends, a strong immunity is typically not conveyed. It's very likely that this particular virus is different, but at the moment it does not seem so. Ultimately though, you are correct, we will have solved this at some point, but that point may lay somewhere in mid-late 2021 at the earliest. But it does present a possibility to keep flaming up until that poi

    • I find myself wondering if it may in fact become a year-spanning event, and even perhaps see that as the most likely outcome. We're basically talking about the flu here. It mutates a little, traveling around the globe largely aligned to the seasons, the available vaccines are only so-so, it infects millions annually, kills somewhere in the ten-thousands, mostly the old, very young, and others somehow immunologically impaired. Other than variables in the infectiousness and mortality, how is COVID-19 not l

    • Hopefully, once those exponential numbers get big enough, it will finally be taken seriously and efforts to slow its spread will be in full force. There should never be a point where we say it's too late too try.

      It's the only way to have the hospital capacity to handle the serious cases, otherwise the mortality rate could easily double or triple. If that happens, we'll have bigger problems than whether E3 is happening.

  • The writing had been on the wall for a while now. E3 was originally all about creating an opportunity for developers and publishers to get the word out about their new releases in an age where the internet was still young. In this streaming era, most publishers are perfectly capable of hosting their own mini events, such as Nintendo Direct, and many major publishers had already pulled out of E3 in recent years. E3 tried to recover by switching back to a more public event focus recently, but even on that fro

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      most publishers are perfectly capable of hosting their own mini events

      That can work for larger publishers that are already well known, not so much for self-publishing indie developers.

      • Showcasing indie devs was something else that PAX has always done better than E3. It's a shame E3 couldn't better change to carve out a new niche for itself.
  • Instead of spending all that extra Dev time to make a pretty E3 demo, they can, you know, work on the games.

    • Instead of spending all that extra Dev time to make a pretty E3 demo, they can, you know, work on the games.

      There is a part of E3 that the fanbois don't see, the part where the devs go to technical conferences most of the day. So companies are not only making a demo, they are also making technical presentation about all facets of game development, and a professional audience is listening and learning.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )
        To be clear, its not GDC, but there are more useful bits that the public doesn't really see.
  • Can Los Angeles strip clubs get some of the small business hospitality industry assistance they are talking about in Washington DC?

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