Reggie Fils-Aime, former head of Nintendo of America, made a cheeky comment about the current state of the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

 

 

Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has overshadowed E3 with a playful comment that has caused quite a stir among fans. His latest thoughts on the Electronic Entertainment Expo came a few days after Nintendo confirmed it would not be attending E3 2023.

E3 has lost its historic lustre in recent years, not least because big publishers like Nintendo and Sony have prioritised their own events, and even digital events like Summer Game Fest, over their annual presence at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The COVID-19 epidemic exacerbated this loss of status after 25 years. This led to the cancellation of E3 2020 and a general digital event a year later. Although the organisers had initially planned to try another virtual event, E3 2022 was eventually cancelled.

Fils-Aime has now likened the current “void” of the Wii U virtual E3 community in Miiverse to the “new reality” of the Wii U. The cheeky March 6 post garnered one million views in its first 20 hours and even elicited a response from Canadian journalist Geoff Keighley, who was one of the main organisers of The Game Awards show. The latter had already become a serious competitor to E3 before the problems caused by the outbreak.

Reggie Fils-Aime’s former employer most recently appeared at the long-running expo with a special Nintendo Direct as part of E3 2021. While that broadcast wasn’t exactly lacking in compelling content, Nintendo had by then been cutting its support for both E3 and all other trade shows for roughly a decade. This continuing trend is presumably rooted in the company’s desire to devote a different news cycle to its own games. This is more practical than competing with other companies for viewership.

Nintendo is far from the only major game publisher that seems to be using this reasoning, as evidenced by the fact that a similar increase in PlayStation State of Play shows and Xbox Developer Direct events have followed the increase in the frequency of Direct broadcasts.

A recent report even claimed that both Sony and Microsoft would miss E3 2023. This would leave the show without the industry’s three most prominent publishers.

Despite all of this, it remains to be seen whether Microsoft will end up skipping the expo, considering that it has historically been a more significant partner of E3 than Sony and Nintendo. In light of the recent announcement of the Xbox summer launch, which will not only take place in June but will even include a physical event in Los Angeles. On the other hand, staging an event in Los Angeles near E3 would not be unprecedented. Because that’s precisely what Electronic Arts has done with its EA Play shows on several occasions.

Source: Twitter

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— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) March 7, 2023