Who’s left?
Might as well start unpacking your bags; IGN is reporting that Sega and Tencent have confirmed to them that they are going to be skipping E3 2023. At this point, the list of companies not attending outsizes the ones who have confirmed they are.
While the two biggest takeaways from IGN’s article is that Sega and Tencent won’t be on the floor, they also received word that Devolver Digital isn’t attending in any capacity. While the publisher would often set up shop in the parking lot as an unofficial demonstration, this year, they’re not even planning that. There will be a Devolver Direct in June, however.
It’s not looking good for E3, which was already facing an uphill battle in re-establishing itself after the COVID pandemic. While video game conventions and shows are still widespread, E3 has long been held as a sort of video game Christmas that all gamers look forward to. Big game and hardware announcements were withheld for this time of year.
The expo’s battle for relevancy won’t end this year. IGN reached out to numerous publishers to get a response on whether they’ll be attending and got mostly radio silence. While that doesn’t mean they definitely won’t be there, in a normal year, most companies would have announced their intentions already.
I have mixed feelings about this, but mainly I’m rooting for E3. It’s been running since I was a kid, and I remember getting excited for it and watching video game news. It’s different now that the internet has changed the speed at which we can hear of new events, so maybe this is the unavoidable future, but I’m going to miss that hype-based burst of dopamine.