Blizzard not to attend E3 this year

Blizzard Entertainment's parent company Vivendi Universal, who also recently acquired Activision, appear to have made a sweeping change in dropping the once popular E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) from their calenders permanently. Both Blizzard and Activision have stated that they plan not to attend the event this year, which must come as quite a blow to the ESA, the organisation that is behind E3. In recent years E3 has been trying to remodel themselves due to huge costs and swarming numbers of gamers previously swooping in on the glamour and glitz of a legendary highlight of the industry, and have moved to a more isolated invitational gathering of reporters, reviewers, and game studios.

It looks like in the future that Blizzard themselves are going to be holding the majority of their own functions and public events, so expect the BlizzCon tradition to continue for quite some years to come.

Original article: TomsGuide.com

Tags: activision/blizzard

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Comments

WatcherZero

78 days ago

You missed the fact their not just missing the show, their actually pulling out of the ESA altogether.

Kalos

78 days ago

I think you need to read it again. The article reports two studios dropping out of their membership and those two are: Vivendi Universal and Activision. Vivendi do own Blizzard, but considering they also owned Activision and Activision still had to drop thier seperate membership, Blizzard appears to have retained thier membership.

I have searched, but Blizzard were not stated to have ended their ESA membership according to this or other articles.

Vivendi Universal and Activision are the two studios who dropped thier association, Blizzard would be a third, which defied what is clearly stated in the first paragraph of there being two studios dropping the ESA membership.

Leord

78 days ago

This could be good news for us fans, might be another BlizzCon after all then. Really nice.

Bad news for ESA, lol!

EMP

78 days ago

If you ask me the now legendary (noisy) E3 has died when it was remodelled.

Kalos

78 days ago

Indeed. They decided that apparently popularity and massive attendance figures aren't something that they wanted, and they wonder why games studios don't want to go there. You don't get your name out there by hiding behind closed doors. Not all members of the press get invites either mind you, some aren't seen as serious or big enough to be worth inviting or noticing. So instead of an overblown even, they went and killed the whole thing. To be honest, we don't really need the ESA to provide a combined conference anyway, it was a paradise under one roof, but having more specialised events hosted by one company, or three or four working together makes sure that the show is properly ordered and centralised, E3 in it's last days was a messy affair, the right approach just too much all going on at once.

WatcherZero

78 days ago

Take a look at the ESA member list Kalos, Activision and Vivendi have been removed and Blizzard is not listed as neither are any subsidaries of either studio as they were done through parent company, so no, blizzard is no longer a member.

Kalos

77 days ago

I hope this members list isn't the one from Wikipedia, as that was already incorrect in multiple ways, could you illuminate this source? I have doubts that such a happening would be overlooked by most of the news quater, but if it is a good source then changes may need to be made.

WatcherZero

77 days ago

why the ESA themselves

Kalos

77 days ago

That's no change then, its been missing for months. Without a statement or press release stating they have done so, we can't make an announcement. It is suspicious, but unconfirmed by Blizzard, so we can't see it as a definite action.

WatcherZero

76 days ago

Well at least Sierra used to be listed under Vivendi and activision used to be listed along with Raven, those were there last time I looked about 6 months ago.