The most important interactive entertainment fair will not be held this year in traditional form due to the escalation of coronavirus infection in the US.
UPDATE: It's official - organizers have confirmed that E3 2020 has been canceled. It has been confirmed that visitors will be able to receive a full refund for the tickets paid. As for the program itself, the organizers said they would explore opportunities to stream news and announcements planned for the fair online.
It was also said that canceling the 2020 fair does not mean that the fair will be abolished in the future.
Microsoft has confirmed that all planned content for the E3 Fair will be broadcast as a digital program.
Original news: The E3 2020 video game fair will not be held this year, according to multiple sources from the gaming industry. We do not yet have official confirmation of this information, but it is quite likely and should be published today, at 5:30 pm CET. The reason for the delay is, of course, the spread of coronavirus infection, of which 31 people have died so far in the United States and over a thousand cases of infection have been reported.
The news about the cancellation of the fair was supposed to have been announced yesterday, but first the organizer held a crisis meeting after which the exhibitors at the fair were allegedly forbidden to publicly transmit information about the cancellation of the fair. The always-alternative publishing company Devolver Digital, which tried to hold its E3 in 2017 - in the parking lot across from E3, apparently didn't listen to the show's organizers.
So it's not 100% safe yet, but it's only a matter of time. There are three months left until the planned fair date, and no one can safely guarantee that the coronavirus situation will get better during this period. Exhibitors and exhibitors are being forced to book their Los Angeles accommodation now and can't wait for long as the organizers decide whether or not it will be held.
The potential postponement of the fair is probably not planned, as E3 would then enter the terms of Comic Con, Gamescom and other fairs. In addition, not only the coronavirus favors cancellation - recently, the production company in charge of E3 2020 canceled collaboration with the organizers, just in the year when E3 was to be refreshed as a video game and gaming culture festival, with influencers and celebrities.
So there won't be conferences and all that?
It is important to emphasize that if the E3 fair is canceled, the game industry loses only that physical part of its presence at the fair - exhibiting games and communicating with the fair's visitors, of which there are about 70 thousand. The one who does not go to the E3 fair in this case practically loses nothing because publishers' conference programs could easily be converted to digital.
We didn't have many confirmed conferences this year anyway. Microsoft was due to hold its own, and it would be one of the bigger conferences since Sony had previously canceled its E3 show, and Nintendo has traditionally stuck to broadcasting pre-recorded programming online. Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Bethesda and Square Enix have not confirmed their 2020 conferences, but it would be no stranger to broadcast them as a recorded program, as some of them did before.
So canceling the fair itself is not the worst possible thing that could happen - in fact, something positive could come from it. If anything, at least there will be no conference with the audience paid to applaud and make a circus of these events.
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