Publisher will still host an on-site showcase, though
Ubisoft has announced that it will now be pulling out of E3 2023.
The news comes as a bit of a shock, considering that just last month in February the company reaffirmed its support for the event. In a statement to VGC, the company noted, “While we initially intended to have an official E3 presence, we’ve made the subsequent decision to move in a different direction, and will be holding a Ubisoft Forward Live event on 12th June in Los Angeles. We look forward to sharing more details with our players very soon.”
This year was meant to be a return to E3 in a physical format, with the LACC booked for days split between industry and consumers. That’s kind of what the industry wanted — 7 years ago and before the end times. Now, even that has changed. Fan events have begun to come back to scale in attendance (this past weekend’s PAX East in Boston sold out of its 4-day badges and admission from Friday-Sunday), and GDC just earlier in the week was well-attended by developers. But now, mixing the two makes less sense.
What’s the path forward? Is E3 dead? Does it go back to a vastly scaled down event that focuses on in-person (boothless) industry meetings and digital streams & showcases? Is the LACC contract that restrictive/demanding?
We don’t know, but we reckon that we may find out the fate of this year’s event in the coming weeks… or days.
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