For decades, E3 has acted as a sort of video game Christmas, bringing fans a heap of new game announcements, trailers, and demos to fawn over. While that kept fans glued to their screens for years, the show has seen a few dings to its reputation recently, making controversial changes to the format. After taking a break last year due to the pandemic though, E3 is back and the participants have been revealed.
Fans have had already had a general sense of the publishers and developers that will be making an appearance at the show, with big names like Xbox, Nintendo, and Konami being revealed a while back. However, the new list shines far more light on some of the big names coming to the conference, which may hint at what sort of reveals fans can expect out of the show.
There are plenty of smaller studios rounding out the list, though there's a surprising number of major studios taking part in the show, considering how unlikely E3 seemed this year. Activision, Amazon, Epic Games, and plenty of others have signed onto the show, which seems like a recipe for success. The digital format has been a big question mark for fans, so it will be interesting to see how successful the show is.
The full list of participants is:
- Activision Publishing, Inc.
- Amazon Game Studios
- Bad Button Studio
- BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America Inc.
- Bethesda Softworks
- Capcom USA, Inc.
- Click Entertainment
- DvG
- Deep Silver, Inc.
- Epic Games Inc.
- Funcom
- GAMELOFT
- GFUEL
- GTR Simulator
- GungHo Online Entertainment America
- HORI USA
- Hyperkin, Inc.
- Kalypso Media Group
- KontrolFreek
- Limited Run Games
- LGA Enterprises
- NCSOFT
- nDreams
- NEXT LEVEL RACING
- Nintendo of America Inc.
- NVIDIA
- PureArts
- Oculus from Facebook
- RDS Industries Inc.
- Rebellion
- SEGA
- Square Enix, Inc.
- Take-Two Interactive Software
- Tastemakers
- TECHNISPORT
- THQ Nordic
- Ubisoft Entertainment SA
- UnnamedVR by Paracosma
- Warner Bros. Games
- Xbox
- XSEED Games
- Xsolla
There are a few interesting aspects of this list worth noting. Bethesda is listed independently from Xbox, implying that the studio may have its own showcase as it has in past years. Considering Microsoft's Bethesda acquisition, that does seem a bit strange, though it might mean that Bethesda has some major news planned for the show. Fans are waiting on Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 information, on top of other projects, so there could be some updates there.
The notable absences are still Sony and EA, though the two companies have been running independent shows for a few years now. PlayStation will likely have a State of Play presentation planned for around that time, with EA likely running a similar stream.
EA is working on Battlefield 6, plus there's a rumor that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is being remade, and E3 would certainly be the place to reveal one or both of those games fully. Only time will tell if that's the case, but at least those that are tuned into the video game scene know what to expect when June finally comes around.
E3 2021 runs from June 12-15.
Source: E3