Summer gaming events 2023: with E3 canceled, here’s what’s next

Nintendo Live is coming to the US. The game maker announced Tuesday that it will hold Nintendo Live 2023 in Seattle, Washington, this September.

Like its Live event this past fall in Japan, this year’s in-person event will feature gameplay from Nintendo games, live stage performances, game tournaments, Nintendo-themed activities, and more. There isn’t any information about when exactly the event will take place in September, but Nintendo says to stay tuned for more details.

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.

E3 2023 has been canceled, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have big summer gaming events to look forward to. We’re already aware of at least three things you should mark on your calendar, and it seems like there will be major news of some kind from each one.

Here’s the 2023 summer gaming events that we’re currently aware of. Given that E3 is now officially not happening, it’s possible this list will grow if more companies want to make a splash in June.

It was inevitable that E3 would end this way. Even before the pandemic put a pause on in-person gatherings, the Electronic Entertainment Expo was already on life-support as the larger developers had already put distance between themselves and the event to focus on their own presentations on their own time. And though E3’s eventual cancellation was all but written in stone, I still feel a great sense of loss. Which is odd considering I’ve never been to E3.

I’ve covered it remotely before. It was my first year of freelancing for a small video game wiki site that no longer exists and I was excited because this was, in my freelancer’s eyes, the big leagues. I was covering E-friggin’-3. This was event that I had dreamed of when I first decided that working an office job was no longer for me. I was still at that office job, watching the presentation live on YouTube, ignoring my actual work, while I rushed to get short 200 word blogs up about stuff like Hazelight Studios’ newest game No Way Out. And I figured that once I got a full-time games journalism job, I wouldn’t be doing this from a cubicle, but from the E3 auditorium itself.

Ubisoft is backing out of its planned attendance at the E3 2023 in-person expo in favor of its own show in LA on June 12th, the company confirmed to VGC.

“E3 has fostered unforgettable moments across the industry throughout the years,” Ubisoft spokesperson Heather Haefner says in a statement to The Verge. “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 June 12 in Los Angeles. We look forward to sharing more details with our players very soon.” The show will take place at 1PM ET / 10AM PT that day.

Xbox is the latest big gaming brand to officially say that it won’t be on the E3 show floor, confirming the decision to IGN on Friday. Just this week, Microsoft announced the June 11th date for its annual Xbox showcase and a dedicated Starfield show, but we still didn’t know if Xbox would actually be on the floor of this year’s in-person E3 convention.

“We can’t wait to host our Xbox Games Showcase on June 11th and will share more details later,” an Xbox spokesperson said in a statement to IGN. “We also look forward to co-streaming our event as part of E3 Digital and will not be on the E3 show floor.”

Nintendo has confirmed to The Verge that it will not be attending E3 2023.

“We approach our involvement in any event on a case-by-case basis and are always considering various ways to engage with our fans,” the company said in a statement. “Since this year’s E3 show didn’t fit into our plans, we have made the decision to not participate. However, we have been and continue to be a strong supporter of the ESA and E3.”

Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are all skipping the revitalized E3 convention in June, according to a new report from IGN. E3 will be back as an in-person conference in Los Angeles after not happening at all in 2022, and I personally was hopeful that the big three console makers would be at the show when it takes place from June 13th through 16th to help make it feel like the big event of years past. But according to IGN’s reporting, that’s not the case.

That said, it’s not entirely unexpected. Sony first skipped E3 in 2019 and hasn’t been part of the convention since. Microsoft said last week that it would be doing a showcase in LA this summer but didn’t outright say the words E3. Nintendo has proven time and time again that it can drive huge news cycles with its can’t-miss Direct video presentations, so it may not feel the need to share the E3 spotlight. And since the show will be taking place about a month after the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo may want to keep the attention of its fans on what could be one of the biggest games of the year.