E3 2020 has officially been cancelled due to concerns over coronavirus, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has revealed. The news comes on the back of last night’s eruption of reports that the signature gaming show would be cancelled this year, and on the back of many major events — gaming and non-gaming related — being canned the last few weeks over similar concerns. The show was originally scheduled to go down this June. More specifically, it was poised to commence on June 9 and run to June 11 via the Los Angeles Convention Center in the United States.
“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,” the ESA said in a statement.
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The ESA is looking into options now to produce an online event in June 2020.
Since its inception in 1995, the event has never missed a year, making today’s cancellation a moment of video game history. That said, while the show has never been cancelled before, most gamers and gaming industry enthusiasts aren’t very surprised. Not only have shows of similar scale been dropping like flies, but there has been rumblings and rumors of an E3 cancellation for a few weeks now.
Leading up to this, numerous major players had already announced they wouldn’t be attending the show for a myriad of reasons. Back in January, Sony Interactive Entertainment officially announced it would not be attending the ebbing consumer meets trade show.
“After thorough evaluation SIE has decided not to participate in E3 2020,” said Sony at the time. “We have great respect for the ESA as an organization, but we do not feel the vision of E3 2020 is the right venue for what we are focused on this year.”
Since January, The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley — who hosted E3 Coliseum the past couple of years — announced he would also be skipping the show. Meanwhile, just this week the show lost one of its big creative director partners. All of this is to say, the writing has been on the wall for awhile.
E3 2020 was notably going to be a big venue for the next generation of console. Unfortunately, it seems those plans are now toast. However, while we may have to wait even longer to find out about all the games coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X, we do already know quite a few titles in development for the pair of shiny next-gen platforms. You can read all about these games via the links below:
As always, feel free to drop a comment or two or 47 with your thoughts or, alternatively, hit me up on Twitter @Tyler_Fischer_ and let me know over there. Are you surprised by this news? Is E3 officially dead?
