Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has stated the plans for E3 2021 “doesn’t sound that compelling;” and that someone else could usurp the event for their own.
Speaking to Gamertag Radio and Danny Peña, Fils-Aimé was asked if game companies would return to an event like E3, now that they had digital events in light of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent quarantine orders. Fils-Aimé praised the importance of E3, celebrating and sharing important events in the industry.
Fils-Aimé also discussed the leaked plans of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) to revive E3 as a digital-focused or purely digital E3 2021. While he said he was not involved with those discussions, what he read “doesn’t sound that compelling.”
While he acknowledged they were right to do the event digitally- and could attract a larger audience than a physical event- the lack of playable games would cause issues.
“I think that the platform holders need to find a way digitally to enable their fans- their players- to experience the content, because that’s the key for E3, right? The ability to be playing The Last of Us Part 3 for the first time, or to play that next Breath of the Wild game for the first time, or to play the next great game coming from the new amalgamation of all the Xbox studios. To play for the first time is what’s magical, and the platform holders need to figure out how to deliver that experience to their fans during an E3-like digital experience. I think that would be huge.
But what I’ve read, as I said, doesn’t go down that path, and if you don’t have all these different elements working together; the big announcements, the hands on, the opportunity in a well-defined time frame to have all these announcements. I think that’s what key to a successful E3 in the future. And candidly if the ESA doesn’t do it, then other people will.”
Fils-Aimé then praised Geoff Keighley’s Summer of Games event in 2020, and stated “If the ESA doesn’t figure out how to do this, someone else will.” It could be interpreted that he was implying Keighley would be that “someone else.”
Fils-Aimé also discussed growing up in The Bronx, how he first discovered video games, his first home game’s console he owned being a SNES, how he jumped into the gaming industry from marketing, highlights of his career, talking with others in the industry about the industry, bringing the industry together, and more.
Since retiring from Nintendo in February 2019, Fils-Aimé has been a teacher at Cornell University, joined the New York Video Game Critics Circle’s Board of Directors, the Board of Directors at GameStop, and hosted fundraiser podcasts for education programs during the coronavirus pandemic.
