As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage across North America, we’ve seen virtually every in-person event and conference move to an online format – or just be outright canceled. Unfortunately, E3 2020 was one of the many to join the latter, having been canceled with no replacement recently.
The main reason for this cancelation was that all of the big developers that would’ve normally gone to showcase decided to drop out over concerns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. With so many of their main attractions dropping out day after day, the issue eventually left E3’s hands, forcing them into canceling their June event.
After so many cancelations, developers eventually began moving their announcements online, knowing that to miss out on the annual event entirely would be a bad idea on a multitude of levels. Thankfully, EA recently announced that they, too, would be holding an online showcase, which will take place around the same time that E3 would’ve been held.
“During this year’s digital event, we’ll showcase our games through a live broadcast, community content, and more,” EA stated in their announcement. “Further details on specific titles will be revealed over the coming weeks.”
EA becomes the most recent of the many companies moving online, with gaming titans like Valve planning to fill the space. Other companies have found a myriad of different ways to hold their online announcements, while others haven’t had to make too many adjustments. Blizzard, for example, already holds a huge amount of their Blizzcon content online for free, so while they’ll still likely need to make heavy adjustments as November comes around, they may be more primed than others to make the switch.
EA’s online component – the EA Play Live – will be held at 4pm PST on June 11th, which would’ve been the final day of the E3 conference. So far, there’s no telling what they intend to share during their announcements. though everyone has their usual suspicions.
EA has also had a bit of a struggle with the COVID-19 pandemic, especially on their sports side of development. With virtually every major sport being mothballed because of the pandemic, titles like FIFA 2020 have been unable to implement real-world statistics and events based off of the real sports, causing a bit of a confusion in the content for players.
Either way, it’s fantastic to see EA moving online so that fans will be able to get some of the content they would’ve been sorely missing. As time goes on, we’ll likely see more and more developers making the same move.
