• News

Nintendo Direct E3 2020 plans canceled, could come later in summer

Nintendo will be skipping a Direct for this year's would-be E3, but we could still see a news-packed event later this summer.

Brittany Vincent

April 30, 2020 8:45 AM

6

Looks like Nintendo is going to be skipping out on its E3 2020 Direct presentation.

VentureBeat reports that Nintendo has been telling developer partners that it will not be holding one of its hotly-anticipated Nintendo Directs in June, as it has every year prior since seven years ago in 2013. It appears that complications have arisen from working remotely, an important measure workers in Japan have taken to mitigate the spread of coronavirus.

The issue? It could be as simple as Japan's somewhat archaic business structure. According to The Washington Post, several business strategies in the country have remained the same since the 1990s, with fax machines in heavy rotation and "little awareness of cloud computing or video conferencing tools." This extends into Japanese citizens' homes as well, according to the AP's Yuri Kageyama.

"Many Japanese lack the basic tools needed to work from home," said Kageyama, noting that many in the country aren't equipped with wireless internet either. This is all part of a larger slice into Japanese culture, and likely a good part of the delay for the potential presentation.

Nintendo had previously been working on a special video event for June and was looking to reveal its first-party game selection for the rest of 2020, including a celebration of the Mario series' 35th anniversary. A series of rumored remastered were potentially going to be revealed, though Nintendo has not confirmed anything about that yet. However, there still very well may be a Direct soon, just later this summer. The company has yet to respond to comments regarding the matter.

If anything changes, we'll be sure to let you know. Shacknews has a storied history of attending events in person with Nintendo and faithfully covering its Direct presentations. Hopefully we'll still see one this summer, but if not, Nintendo will likely get the new information to us in another format. 

Brittany Vincent

Senior Editor

Fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games, Brittany is a Senior Editor at Shacknews who thrives on surrealism and ultraviolence. Follow her on Twitter @MolotovCupcake and check out her portfolio for more. Like a fabulous shooter once said, get psyched!