Oh, it looks like Ubisoft won’t be attending E3 2023 after all

destructoid.com:

VGC is reporting that Ubisoft has decided to back out of E3’s attempted return in 2023. This comes a month after they claimed they were finalizing their plans to attend the expo. I suppose those plans are now finalized as being “nope.”

Speaking to VGC, a spokesperson reportedly said, “While we initially intended to have an official E3 presence, we’ve made the subsequent decision to move in a different direction, and will be holding a Ubisoft Forward Live event on 12th June in Los Angeles. We look forward to sharing more details with our players very soon.”

This is disappointing news for anyone who was hoping E3 would return in full form this year after a three-year physical hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic. Sony and Nintendo have both stated they’ll be passing on the expo, with Microsoft holding a separate event elsewhere in LA.

While those are hardly the only big companies in the industry today, E3 was once an event that publishers would be crazy to miss. It was the biggest event of the year, and while it’s still an important time for announcements, the biggest companies in the business are progressively moving further and further away from it. It seems like the only way it would ever return to form would be if these publishers were lured into the convention center with the promise of cake and locked the doors behind them.

There’s still something of a question mark above who’s still going to be attending the Electronic Entertainment Expo, with show organizer Reedpop simply saying that “AAA companies, in addition to indie darlings and tech and hardware firms,” will be in attendance.

E3 will be running this year from June 13 through 16 in Los Angeles. You can find the whole tentative schedule right over here.