Gaming

Batman, Harry Potter, and Rocksteady video games were going to be at E3 2020 claims insider


Batman was going to be at E3 (pic: Warner Bros.)

Warner Bros. was apparently planning to have its first E3 press conference this year, as Phil Spencer reacts to E3 2020’s cancellation.

The fallout from the cancellation of E3 has already begun, with Kotaku journalist Jason Schreier revealing that Warner Bros. was planning to host their own pre-E3 event this year.

Warner has been extremely quiet for the last few years but there have been ongoing rumours of a new Batman game; a Harry Potter role-playing game; and some kind of multiplayer, DC Comics related title from Batman: Arkham creators Rocksteady Games.

There are enough leaks to suggest all three game are real but it’s now unclear when we’ll find out about them publicly. The best guess is some kind of Nintendo Direct style livestream at roughly the same time as E3 would’ve been (i.e. early June) but games companies also only found out about E3 today, so will have had no time to organise anything else yet.

Meanwhile, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has indicated that Microsoft will be making its E3 announcements at an ‘Xbox digital event’. Although again there are no details yet, as the decision to cancel E3 was only taken last night.

Other publishers, such as Ubisoft, have spoken up to support the cancellation, as the only sensible decision in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

Ubisoft has always been a strong supporter of E3 and along with Bethesda and Square Enix were also expected to host their own pre-E3 press events.

The only companies that won’t be caught short by the cancellation are EA and Sony, who weren’t going anyway, and Nintendo, who although they did plan to attend make all their announcements via Nintendo Direct livestreams – a format that other publishers are likely to adopt now as well.

But as Schreier points out in another tweet the real problem with E3 being cancelled is that all the backroom deals between publishers and developers, that was originally the whole point of E3, will no longer happen.

It’s easy enough for companies to organise their own preview events – online or otherwise – but for many games companies the real benefit of E3 was being able to network with almost the entire industry at once.

That’s something that will become impossible if E3 does not return and creates particular problems for indie studios who have already had to endure GDC (Games Developers Conference) being cancelled this year.

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