 Hey everyone, so this was kind of an unplanned video today, but that's alright. We get to talk about some negative news that almost is a positive, although right now for us Nintendo fans, there's still some mystery and some wonderment around this announcement. But that's because ultimately it's going to end up being a better show than it would have been otherwise. What are we talking about? Well, it has been announced today by the ESA, and it basically came out from other people inside the industry, and then eventually the ESA confirmed that E3 2022 has been cancelled. That means the digital event, they did cancel the physical event earlier, now the digital event is cancelled as well, and you might go, but Nate, how is this a good news? How is anything positive coming out of canceling one of the longest ongoing events in video game history? I have some news for you on that, and why we should actually be more excited now that this is cancelled, and yes, my summer E3 extravaganza show is still happening, it just obviously won't use E3 branding. We'll talk about that in a moment after I remind you that, hey, if this is the first time that you've ever seen one of my videos, I would appreciate it if you would subscribe to the channel. This also happens to be the last day you can enter one of our giveaways. You have to be subscribed to win. We are giving away an Xbox Series X, a PlayStation 5, or a Switch OLED, you just have to add that to the pinned comment or the description and click on that gleam.io link. I wish everyone luck. We'll be announcing it tomorrow night on a live stream who wins, although you don't have to be at that stream in person to win or anything. Now, let's get into the actual news by first showing you the original report that came from IGN. So IGN said E3 2022 digital and physical has officially been cancelled. The ESA has confirmed the cancellation. After previously canceling, it's in person E3 2022 event. The ESA has now formed its partners that there will be no digital event equivalent this year either, meaning E3 2022 has been fully cancelled. The news broke via a tweet from Razor PR lead Will Powers, who said that an email have been sent out announcing the cancellation of the digital E3 event. IGN has independently verified the contents of the email as well. The ESA had initially planned for an in-person E3 event this year after having no event in 2020 due to COVID-19 and a digital one only in 2021. However, this was cancelled in January with the ESA at the time unable to make a public statement of whether or not there would be a digital equivalent. According to sources speaking to IGN at the time, discussions around E3 have been fraught throughout the year. With third parties normally involved in finding the ESA's ongoing silence regarding their plans, frustrating. So this is key because obviously the ESA needs the third party companies to cooperate so they can, you know, actually show games at the event. Sources connected to the event tell IGN that discussions about a possible digital event equivalent have been ongoing ever since. So again, we talked about how there was email sent out by the ESA about a month or so ago where they were reaching out to people. So they were trying to make this event happen. But obviously they don't get the feedback they hoped. But without straw momentum to drive them, instead the ESA seems to be making plans to regroup for a larger comeback in 2023. That's supposedly their plans. Good luck because what's happening instead is might make, if they can't do an in-person event, it might make E3 gone. We'll talk about that. Update has the ESA has shared an official statement with IGN confirming E3 2022's cancellation and announcing that E3 will return in 2023 with a reinvigorated showcase. I mean, if it's an in-person event, I'll give them that. Because still, there's nothing to replace that in-person event. But we will devote all of our energy and resources to delivering a revitalized physical and digital E3 experience next summer. Whether enjoyed from the show floor or your favorite devices, the 2023 showcase will bring the community, media, and industry back together in an all-new format and interactive experience. We look forward to presenting E3 to fans around the world and live from Los Angeles in 2023. The ESA adds that the 2022 showcase has been canceled so the organization can focus its resources on the 2023 show. Now, obviously, a lot of that's fluff at the end. They canceled the 2022 show because they didn't have enough support to do a 2022 show. And I could actually argue they didn't have enough support to do a show last year either. If you guys remember the E3 2021 show last year, they, for some reason, thought they had enough content to do a four-day event with eight to ten hour days where there was really only four presentations in total that showed games that took up less than two hours. And yet they thought they had four days worth of stuff. And I was initially excited for what the prospect of an E3 digital event could be because I figured Nintendo had shown the ESA the way. What did I mean by that? Well, Nintendo, during E3 physical events in the past, would do the Nintendo Treehouse for eight hours a day for three straight days, showing how to properly do this. What do you do? You have your initial kickoff event showing games from a certain company. Then you have developer interviews. You have people playing the games. Like, that's what I thought the ESA could have done. That's what E3 should have been. And unfortunately, that's not what actually happened. In fact, one of the most memorable events is, you know, things like Gearbox showing off a movie and then, hey, let's waste 40 minutes talking about Verizon 5G and how it's better for gaming without actually showing any games and how it actually makes gaming better. Clearly just a massive ad spot. And yeah, that's not that good. No one wants to see that kind of thing. And obviously at the end, even though Microsoft I thought did a really good job, I thought Nintendo killed it, it didn't really matter because the overall show taste left of my mouth was really poor to the point that I chucked a bottle and basically told the ESA to eff off. So whether, you know, if some reason, if they have an in-person event in 2023 and I can't get into the show, you know, I wouldn't blame the ESA because I did not have kind words for them last year because they put on what I still view to this day a shit show. So it wasn't good anyways. Now, that doesn't mean we don't have anything to look forward to this summer. So let's talk about what's happening this summer and we're gonna actually look at my Twitter account for this because I have all the stuff here. So I mentioned E3 has canceled, but our show is not. As we actually announced, a while ago we have Summer Game Fest to cover and all of our plans will be built around that show. The question now is, when is Nintendo gonna drop the next direct? You know, let the rumors fly, all right? Next up, I retweeted this one by Jeff Keely saying excited to share the Summer Game Fest will return this June with a slate of events will be producing another kickoff live show with announcements, news and first looks much more to share in the coming weeks along with some very cool new elements for 2022. And obviously this is gonna be really cool. We should probably know the dates here at some point in April so we can actually plan our event around that event. So it's gonna be really, really cool. And then up here, I actually decided I wanted to show people what is happening with Summer Game Fest basically being what E3 never could have dreamed of and that is looking at the partners that are gonna be showing games at this event. So you've Koch Media, Media Tonic, MiHoYo, Bandai Namco, Netflix, which yes, Netflix does have a gaming division. Cyanics, we have Raw Fury, Riot Games, Saber Interactive, Sega, PlayStation's gonna be there, Prime Gaming, Square Enix, Steam, Tencent Games, the Tribeca Festival, Ubisoft, Warner Bros, Wizards of the Coast, Xbox, okay? But we're not done. 2K, Activision, Amazon Games, Anna Peruna, Blizzard Entertainment, Capcom, Devolver Digital, which had an amazing show there last year, Dot Emu, EA's gonna be there as well, Epic Games, Fingy, Frontier, Gearbox, Hi-Res Studios, Inner Sloth, and for some reason I can't see the rest. Let me scroll down here now, it's not showing. But anyways, the point is it's got pretty much everybody. The only notable omission from this list is Nintendo. Remember that Sony left E3 years ago, EA left E3 years ago, and yet they're able to get Sony, EA, Sega, Ubisoft, 2K, Activision, Blizzard, Microsoft, Epic Games, everyone back together in one show the way E3 used to be. That is what's awesome here is that Jeff Keely, this man, the myth, the legend himself, was able to bring all these companies back together. Again, the only missing piece at the moment is Nintendo, and that could still be in the works, still be in the negotiation stage. It's possible because Nintendo has supported the game awards that Jeff Keely runs every year. Obviously, Nintendo's been a big supporter of E3, but now E3 officially canceled, and they likely got the email as well. Who knows what conversations are happening between Jeff Keely and Nintendo to hopefully get them on board as well, because this is basically replacing E3. Jeff grew up without the vibe check that he was getting, and he's an industry insider and a journalist, said I was actually getting that everyone is going with Keely instead, because he's actually competent. And this brings up criticisms that Jeff Keely had of E3 years ago, before he decided he was no longer gonna support the event and stop attending, where he basically said he doesn't like what E3 is doing, he doesn't like what the ESA is doing, he doesn't think the ESA understands gamers and game publishers. And as we saw with last year's digital event, the ESA clearly has no idea what they were doing. They cared more about companies like Razor and Verizon buying ad space than they actually cared about catering a show to gamers. And notably last year's Summer Game Fest, the second one that's ever existed was actually pretty good. It was much better organized and it felt more like an E3 event. They even had press conferences from companies like Devolver Digital, which is hey, that was E3's thing, now they get it. What? That's crazy. So I also mentioned that he got Sony back in the fold with Microsoft and obviously I didn't mention in here, EA as well so there's no EA play this year because hey, they're gonna be at Summer Game Fest and then obviously when the news broke, Jeff Kealy just put out a winky face because it's pretty obvious at this point that Jeff Kealy actually is the reason E3's not happening this year because the ESA reached out to try to get companies to commit and it's just Jeff Kealy is a more likeable person that has a better direction that obviously these companies enjoy and I mentioned Jeff Kealy actually cares about putting on a show about games and that's what's important is no matter how much you can criticize Jeff Kealy, you might not like the way he presents things, you might not like the format at which he organizes his shows, it is undeniable that he actually cares about video games and showing video games. Remember, for all the hullabaloo about the game awards, what's one of the number one criticisms? Too much focus on game reveals, I don't know, focus on the awards, well guess what? That doesn't matter for a show like this because the focus is the games and the game reveals and the trailers. Jeff Kealy gets to do E3 right and that is exciting because he already was out doing E3 just last year. If you actually sat there and eliminated your bias for wanting to see Nintendo's direct and you go, which show was better? Summer Game Fest or E3, it's not even close. Summer Game Fest destroyed E3 and you know what? The companies that chose to participate in E3 saw that. They saw that Verizon 5G segment. They saw those wasted hours with panelists not even talking about video games. Just let's get a bunch of these random influencers together and not even talk about games. Let's talk about social issues. Let's talk about politics. Let's not actually mention that this is a video game show and it's the only reason anyone is watching. It was insane and yet Summer Game Fest was nothing but games the entire time. Heck, they had developer interviews. They had developers rocking gameplay. They were doing what the ESA should have been doing. So sure, E3 might come back in 2023 and right now Jeff Kealy doesn't have plans to replace the in-person event that E3 was and it's possible that Summer Game Fest becomes the new kickoff event for E3 in person. Maybe that would also require the ESA and Jeff Kealy to actually come together which I think right now the ESA should basically be in his DMs, in his inbox making phone calls with Jeff Kealy and being like, hey, you were right this whole time. We're really, really sorry. Hey, how about next year you guys handle like all the press conferences and all the kickoff into the live event and then you tell us what we need to do in our live event to actually make it better. Let's work together. Let's not separate the industry. Of course, that would also require the ESA to eat some of its own pride and admit that they don't know what they're doing and they need Jeff Kealy's help. And again, Jeff Kealy would get to keep his show and just use his show as the kickoff for the E3 in person event and it actually could be quite brilliant. Of course, I don't expect the ESA to actually do this. I expect the ESA to say, screw you. We are the ESRB. We are gonna run our own show. We're back in person, baby. And that's what's gonna matter the most and honestly, if Jeff Kealy gets all the game announcements and all you have are demos and then you don't let these companies work together with Jeff Kealy with the announcements and the demos, that's gonna be a problem. So yeah, we'll see what happens there. I basically am sort of predicting E3 being canceled next year as well. Not just because the pandemic might still be going on. Even if it's not, it doesn't really matter. I don't think the ESA has enough clout at the moment to pull off an event without support from Jeff Kealy who clearly these companies will even more than them. So, except Nintendo. Of course, Nintendo still could be announced as a partner, still could join the fray. Nintendo does like to be there at bigger industry events like this, like the Game Awards, like E3 in the past. So even though Nintendo's not on that partner list yet, Nintendo might have already committed to E3 and now that E3's been canceled, Nintendo can obviously shift their plans. But yeah, this is gonna be a really, really good event. I can't wait. Now, speaking of what we're doing, last year we did the E3 extravaganza. This year we're obviously making a hard shift to covering Summer Game Fest, which because Summer Game Fest was so good last year, we already were gonna include Summer Game Fest. So all that really happened is instead of us having a week-long event like was going to happen with E3 and the Game Awards going back to back, we actually get to focus on Summer Game Fest. And I'm really excited about that because Summer Game Fest is so much better. I expect Jeff Kealy to make it probably an extra day long. He's got so many more game companies partnering with him. Probably lots more game showcases, more developer interviews, more gaming music. This is going to end up being a phenomenal stream and what's really cool is Jeff Kealy likes working with content creators like me. He makes shows extremely streamer-friendly. He has an entirely separate version that prevents copyright strikes because he cares about content creators and realizes the role we can play in helping push these events. So I'm honestly just really, really looking forward to what's gonna happen and what this event is going to be. I'm so stoked that this is actually, you know what? You might view this as a negative. I actually think it's a positive. It is a negative in that this might be the end of the E3 era and a lot of us have a lot of really fun E3 moments. E3 2006 will always forever stand out to me from that Twilight Princess announcement to the live crowd. And you guys all have your favorite E3 moments, I'm sure as well, but hey, you know what? When it comes to just digital-only events, I trust Jeff Keely a hell of a lot more than I trust anything happening with the ESA. So we're still gonna do our live event, built around that, still have all of our giveaways, still have our crazy competitions and the death wheel and everything in between. It's just now gonna be built around what I feel is gonna be a better event. And I'm probably not gonna end the event by saying FU Jeff Keely because last year he made it all about the games. So if he just keeps making it all about the games, what the hell can I be disappointed in? Even if the games are games I'm not into. Doesn't really matter, at least the show's about video games and that's what we're talking about. And he brought Sony, EA and Microsoft all together. He gets Nintendo in the fold. I mean, come on, that's the trifecta of, I mean, Valve is there. So you got the Steam Deck there and PC represented from Valve side. You have Microsoft there with the Xbox and Game Pass. You have obviously the PS Plus and PlayStation stuff there with Sony. You get Nintendo there and it's time, baby. Anyways, I am Nathan and RoboJance from Nintendo Prime. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you guys in the next video.