This year’s E3 convention, the video game world’s most well-known conference, has reportedly become the latest major public event to be officially cancelled in the wake of the coronavirus.
Publisher Devolver Digital, famed for its tumultuous relationship with E3, set the stage with a tweet suggesting people to start cancelling their hotel bookings. Since then, other outlets including Ars Technica and Bloomberg have weighed in with similar reports.
Bloomberg, in particular, indicated that the Entertainment Software Association, which holds the annual trade show, is expected to announce the cancellation this morning. Then, just minutes ago, the following statement was issued to Kotaku:
“After careful consultation with our member companies regarding the health and safety of everyone in our industry – our fans, our employees, our exhibitors and our longtime E3 partners – we have made the difficult decision to cancel E3 2020, scheduled for June 9-11 in Los Angeles.”
This marks the latest gaming or tech event to have been cancelled or postponed following the Game Developers Conference, Facebook’s F8, Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference, Google I/O 2020, and SXSW.
E3, of course, is also famous for being one of the biggest weeks of the year for the announcement of new video games – this year in particular was seen as a key one with new consoles launching at year’s end and some major games still yet to reveal dates for 2020.
If officially called off, it begs the question as to will game companies like Bethesda or Ubisoft hold virtual press conferences? Also with no end in sight for now to the shuttering of major events, gaming fans are wondering both when and how Sony and Microsoft will officially unveil their new consoles for the holiday.
