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GamingNexus learned, and subsequently confirmed, last night that Activision will not be participating in E3 this year. According to a direct statement given by the company, “After careful consideration, for business reasons, Activision has decided not to participate in any official E3 activities. We wish the ESA best of luck with the show.” Activision will host a press conference on the opening night of E3, but it will not be part of the annual event. That means the next in the line for games like Guitar Hero and Call of Duty will not be officially represented. Activision joins other important publishers such as Blizzard / Sierra (which will become part of Activision later this year in a planned merger with Vivendi Universal), Atlus, Majesco, NCsoft, and WBIE to not participate in the event. Why have these companies bowed out of E3? Maybe it has something to do with the new closed format. I don’t blame them. Why pay to participate in an toned down expo that’s only going to generate as much hype about your products as an off-site press conference would? E3 used to be the Gen Con of video gaming with more than just fanboys coming out of the woodwork for the event. It made things much more difficult for legitimate media types to cover the event, but the hoopla surrounding the exposition more than made up for it. Maybe it’s time to open E3 back up to the fans!
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