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E3 2023 Officially dead!

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The gaming industry has changed, and it doesn’t need E3 anymore.

By Md Mojahidul Islam

E3 2023 is cancelled, and the gaming industry is mourning. Like my colleague Ash Parrish, I’ve always wanted to go, but don’t think I’ll ever get the chance; the industry has changed enough that it’s probably not coming back.

Even E3’s organizers don’t seem optimistic. The Entertainment Software Association’s (ESA)  president and CEO completely dodged when GamesIndustry.biz asked if the event would return in 2024.

“We’re committed to providing an industry platform for marketing and convening but we want to make sure we find that right balance that meets the needs of the industry,” Stanley Pierre-Louis told the publication. “We’re certainly going to be listening and ensuring whatever we want to offer meets those needs and at that time, we will have more news to share.” Compare to 2022, when the organizers were already talking about 2023 when they cancelled that year’s show.

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A press release from event organizer ReedPop did give a tiny ray of hope, saying that it and the ESA would “continue to work together on future E3 events.” But I just don’t believe that future E3 events will happen at all.

The pandemic proved that gaming could survive without E3. The last year E3 took place in person was in 2019; the event was cancelled in 2020, held as a digital show in 2021, and bounced from in person to online-only and finally to fully cancelled last year in 2022. Yet even without E3 as an anchor, developers and publishers have found ways to make a splash that don’t include the investment required for a big booth on the expo show floor.

And when the pandemic arrived, the industry already had a playbook to follow — a playbook written by Nintendo. Since 2011, the company has seen enormous success with its Nintendo Direct video presentations, letting anyone in the world watch big game reveals without attending a physical show.

Since then, nearly every major gaming company has adopted the format to create newsworthy moments of their own, and they’re pre-recorded ones that can’t break down on stage or might embarrass in front of a live audience. The videos can be published whenever suits the company instead of cramming them all into June, letting them create their own news cycles about upcoming games without having to share a spotlight with anyone else. Then, they can send journalists software over the internet, no need to wait for a locked-down demo console.

The pandemic also proved that companies can launch entire console generations without significant hands-on opportunities ahead of their debut. Both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S were released in November 2020, and while constraints created in part due to the pandemic made them nearly impossible to find for years, these consoles have proven to be hits. Why bother to show new hardware at E3 in the future?

For years, one of the remaining arguments for E3 has been that it’s a place for companies to do business in person, get face-to-face time, and shake hands on stage to promote their brands. But even execs have been forced to figure out how to do those things remotely during the pandemic, and may not need it anymore.

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The big console makers have generally moved away from E3 as of late, anyway. PlayStation skipped E3 2019 in favor of hosting its own video presentations at different times throughout the year. Nintendo had already said that it wouldn’t be participating in E3 this year, and while that doesn’t preclude the company from making news in June, it might be content to let The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom do the talking. As soon as Nintendo pulled out, I really started to worry that E3 2023 might not happen. But after Microsoft opted out of this year’s show floor in favor of its own showcase in Los Angeles around Starfield, it felt like the writing was on the wall.

And in the absence of E3, Geoff Keighley has stepped in to fill the void. He launched his first all-digital Summer Game Fest in June 2020, and he’s since hosted one every year as a venue for E3-like gaming bombshells. Sure, some years were better than others, but with E3 now entirely out of the picture for 2023, it seems likely that this year’s Fest will suck up some of what was planned for the convention.

I’m not saying in-person conventions are dead. E3 actually hasn’t been the biggest video game convention for years — it’s one-sixth the size of Gamescom, held in Germany every year, and other overseas conventions are larger too. Even in the United States, last week’s Game Developers Conference had news and January’s Consumer Electronics Show was surprisingly fun, just to name two recent examples.

E3 just doesn’t seem to fit the needs of the gaming industry anymore — and so the industry has moved on.

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Apple to spend $30 billion on Broadcom chips as it boosts US sourcing

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Apple , opens new tab plans to spend more than $30 ​billion under a multi-year chip supply deal with Broadcom, bolstering ‌its U.S. sourcing as President Donald Trump’s administration pushes to expand domestic chip manufacturing.
Broadcom shares rose more than 4%, while Apple shares were ​down marginally.
Apple said on Wednesday the deal, which ​was struck earlier this week and runs through 2031, ⁠covers FBAR filters – or radio-frequency chips used for ​wireless connectivity in its devices – that it had been ​developing with Broadcom since at least 2023.
Broadcom will invest $1.5 billion to expand its Fort Collins, Colorado, factory under the deal, which Apple ​said would result in the production of at ​least 15 billion chips and support its work with the Trump ‌administration ⁠to source more components domestically.
“The cutting-edge components built in Fort Collins are essential to delivering the incredible performance and connectivity our customers expect, and we’re proud to deepen our ​investments in ​U.S.-based suppliers ⁠that share our commitment to excellence and innovation,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in ​a statement.
“We’re grateful to the president and his ​administration ⁠for supporting important projects like this.”
In August 2025, Apple raised its U.S. investment commitment to $600 billion over four ⁠years, adding $100 billion ​to a previously announced spending ​plan.

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China plans to let top AI firms buy limited Nvidia H200 chips, the Information reports

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China is planning to allow the country’s top AI companies to buy a limited number of Nvidia’s, opens new tab H200 chips, ​the Information reported on Wednesday, citing two people with direct knowledge ‌of the matter.
Chinese officials have told Alibaba, opens new tab, ByteDance and DeepSeek in recent weeks that they may soon receive permission to buy some H200 chips, the report said.
Shares of Nvidia ​rose 1% after the report.
The chip giant did not immediately respond to ​a Reuters request for comment, nor did the U.S. commerce ⁠department, which oversees exports of advanced AI chips overseas.
China’s commerce ministry also ​did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Alibaba, ByteDance and ​DeepSeek did not respond outside of regular business hours.
The U.S. government has allowed Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 chips to China, and licensed about 10 Chinese firms to buy the ​chips. However, Chinese officials, keen to nurture domestic suppliers, have withheld approval so ​far.
Reuters reported in March that Nvidia had won Beijing’s approval to sell the chips to China, ‌citing ⁠sources, and around the same time, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also told CNBC that the company had clearance from China.
Beijing is still determining the exact number of Nvidia chips to approve, and it could amount to fewer than 200,000 ​in total, the ​Information said, adding ⁠that was less than half of what the companies requested earlier this year.
Last month, Reuters exclusively reported that Nvidia told ​Chinese clients its new “Vera” central processors for AI data centres ​could be ⁠available as soon as August and that they can begin placing orders.
Nvidia’s market share in China has effectively fallen to zero, Huang said in October, hurt ⁠by U.S. ​export controls and Beijing’s push for self-reliance in ​key technologies.
The potential shift in China’s stance underscores the growing computing capacity crunch that the country’s ​tech companies are facing.

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Australia’s under-16 social media ban fails first age check hurdle, study finds

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A team of software testers found that Australian social media platforms did not request age proof for any of 50 accounts that declared themselves to be 16, a result that leaves the country’s world-first under-16 ban “ineffective” at the most basic screening stage, according to a study seen by Reuters.

Since December, platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube have been required to bar people under 16 and take “reasonable steps” to verify age, with regulators recommending multiple layered checks. But the new research, conducted by those who advised the nationwide curb, shows that the initial vetting step, which estimates a user’s age from general online activity, is failing to flag young people for tougher verification.
The testers, who last year trialled age-assurance software on more than 1,000 Australians, opened 50 new accounts after the law took effect and set the age as 16. None of the platforms asked for additional proof, the researchers told Reuters. The findings highlight a flaw that has been largely overlooked while public debate has focused on photo-based age-estimation tools.

The ban’s rollout has been widely criticised after surveys indicated that most under-16s still access the platforms. The government last month doubled the maximum fine and warned of possible court action against tech giants, accusing them of setting the system up to fail. Platforms have countered that they are simply following the regulator’s guidance, which prioritises low-friction checks and prevents reliance on government ID alone due to privacy concerns.

Some advisers to the original trial said they had repeatedly warned that the testing process ignored real-world circumvention, including minors entering false birthdates. “We did want to talk about circumvention, but we kept on being told that that wasn’t part of the actual trial,” Colm Gannon of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children told Reuters. A youth digital rights academic involved in a longer-term study of the ban said more impressive results might emerge once platforms move to age-inference methods later in the year. The regulator maintains that the recommended layered approach, if implemented correctly, ensures no single point of failure.

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