Earlier this week, we learned that Nintendo is skipping its annual press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo gaming show in Los Angeles this June. Today, BioShock Infinite publisher 2K Games revealed it is skipping the media event entirely.
On its forums, 2K said it won’t have a booth on the E3 show floor but that it is still hard at work preparing its new games for release. The company also plugged its YouTube and Twitch channels for gamers looking to keep up on news from the company.
Here is the full 2K statement from company spokesperson Ronnie Singh:
At 2K, we’re excited for the new opportunities coming with the next generation of hardware, and are hard at work preparing our announced titles for release. While 2K will not have a booth on the show floor at this year’s E3 conference, we will have a lot of great news coming your way this spring. Our slate of titles coming this year include highly anticipated games like Sid Meier’s Civilization V: Brave New World, XCOM: Enemy Unknown for iOS, more content for Borderlands 2, as well as WWE 2K14 and NBA 2K14. Stay tuned for our live gameplay and event broadcasts to see the latest gameplay from our upcoming titles. Subscribe to our Twitch channel at twitch.tv/2K and on YouTube at youtube.com/2Kgames.
It’s highly unusual for a major publisher like this to skip E3. The conference is one of the biggest media events of the year for publishers. This development could speak to the E3’s waning importance and the rise in direct-to-consumer tools that sites like YouTube and Twitch provide.
We’ve reached out to 2K to ask it to elaborate on its strategy.
The money that 2K saves from skipping E3 could go toward producing more video and livestreaming content that could go viral and will draw media attention separately.
Nintendo found success with its Nintendo Direct streaming video shows that are essentially mini-E3 press events that often reveal big announcements about upcoming games. It’s possible that smaller companies could try to emulate that.
2K Games’ parent publisher, Take-Two Interactive, still plans to hold business meetings at E3.