COVID is running amok events everywhere are being delayed and cancelled and quite frankly everyone’s sick of hearing about it. One of those among the fallen is the world’s largest yearly gaming convention, E3.
It was announced that E3 2020 was cancelled back in March, but despite the fact that the event has officially been cancelled, the announcements and the showcases the developers involved in the event had planned are still going ahead.
To be clear, this does not mean there will be a digital version of E3, instead, the other companies and organisations involved have revealed plans to host their own virtual events to deliver all of the latest news updates and plans involving upcoming game releases.
The only thing that’s changed is the dates and the timespan over which the events will take place. E3 usually runs as a one-week event in June, but the replacement events are instead sporadically placed over the next few months.
Some events are scheduled to take place when E3 was originally set to happen, and others like Ubisoft’s Move Forward stream, for instance, will take place later in the summer.
E3 2020 was set to be one for the ages since it would’ve served as the last chance to hear about the plans that the top developers had for the next-gen gaming consoles before they roll out later this year. Luckily, most plans will still go ahead, just not all under the same roof.
There are still many unanswered questions, including when the next Nintendo Direct even will happen and when Sony plan to officially reveal the PS5. But here’s everything we know about the E3 2020 replacement events line-up.
Summer Game Fest – May 12 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time
First announced at the start of May, Summer Game Fest is a digital gaming event set to take place for a whole month. It’s organised by E3 veteran Geoff Keighley, who mysteriously announced he was dropping out of E3 this year, just a month before the chaos ensued and the event was cancelled.
Apart from the steam game festival (a mini-festival revolving around steam games), It’s unknown what the festival is actually going to include but we do know that there will be game demos and there will also be multiple individual live-streams delivering new announcements. The first of these being, “Sunrise #1” which live-streamed today at noon.
Guerrilla Collective – June 6 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Guerrilla Collective is a multi-day event that showcases more indie and medium-sized studios hosted by co-founder (and former IGN host) Greg Miller. It’s set to transpire over the weekend beginning on June 6, and it will comprise of two online press events.
Starting with one on the Saturday and followed by one on the Sunday. Then on the Monday, there will be a day of demos and interviews with developers.
Among the studios confirmed to be involved are 11 Bit Studios and Versus Evil.
PC Gaming Show – June 6 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time
This event seems like it may be a part of the aforementioned Guerilla Collective event hosted by former pro-gamer, Sean “Day9” Plott and esports present Frankie Ward.
Big announcements aren’t usually part of this event, it mainly consists of people sitting on a couch giving gameplay demos from different genres in a more intimate setting, which is cool because we get to hear behind the scenes info about passion projects from developers.
CD Projekt Red, Night City Wire – June 11 at TBD
This event will be held by the makers of Cyberpunk 2077, a game that was originally supposed to be released this April. We know it will revolve entirely around the game but other than that we don’t know much. We just hope it’s not another delay announcement.
EA, Play Live 2020 – June 11 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Traditionally, EA Play includes members of the public in on the action allowing them to play demos and talk to those involved in the event. Of course, with the current situation, this is no longer possible, since everything will be online.
So, it’s unknown how this year’s event will be ran but with EA Access coming to steam and the upcoming title Anthem 2.0, still in the works, there’s definitely a lot to talk about.
Ubisoft, Move Forward – July 12 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time
One of the events that fall outside of the original slot will be the Ubisoft, Move Forward event that was announced yesterday. Described as an “E3-style showcase”, the event will include multiple reveals of new games, but the main attraction of the event will no doubt be the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
There’s also speculation that we may get a new release date for Watch Dogs Legion. It was originally set to arrive in March but it fell victim to delays.
Microsoft, Xbox 20/20 – July, TBD
We got a little look at some of the games that are coming out in Microsoft’s underwhelming “Xbox Series X First Look At Gameplay” (it really wasn’t gameplay at all). Luckily, this was just the first in a series of monthly events detailing their plans.
This is, of course, means that we will be getting the next one in June, but as of right now Microsoft hasn’t said anything about that one. For some reason, the company has instead opted to promote the July event, where it will focus on its upcoming first-party games. So, it looks like this one is set to be pretty big.
In 2018, Microsoft embarked on a mission to acquire a myriad of studios and they now have 15 in-house studios working on new games for the Xbox Series X. One of these being the highly anticipated Halo Infinite, set to debut this fall.
Other events that we know are happening include Devolver Digital’s annual E3-adjacent press conference, which currently has no date, and game publisher Limited Run Games’ press conference, which is set to take place June 8 at 3:00 p.m. ET.
We are also expecting events from other publishers such as Square Enix, who are developing Marvel’s Avengers Game that was revealed at E3 2019, and also Warner Bros.
