Bethesda Confirms It's Coming Back To E3

Bethesda has announced it will once again host an E3 presentation , eschewing the recent trend from publishers like Sony and Electronic Arts to step back from the industry event. It will take place Sunday, June 9 at 5:30 PM PT, and will be livestreamed for viewers at home.

The company teased the announcement with the #BE3 hashtag on Twitter. The theme for this year's presentation is "Be Together," and Bethesda says it will be inviting more fans to join in the live audience. The only game formally announced to make an appearance is Doom Eternal, though the teaser image shows silhouettes of lots of characters from across Bethesda's franchises. Last year the studio mentioned both Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6, so we may hear more about those.

The teaser even includes a cheeky reference to Walmart Canada, which exposed several games planned for last year's E3--including Rage 2 from Bethesda. The company riffed on the leak, and then marketing director Pete Hines cracked a joke at the store's expense during the E3 2018 presentation.

This is par for the course for Bethesda, which began having large-scale E3 presentations five years ago. It is swimming against the tide of the industry as a whole, however. Nintendo stopped giving press conferences in favor of pre-recorded Nintendo Direct presentations and week-long Treehouse streams. Sony announced this year it wouldn't be presenting at E3 at all. EA recently followed suit, still planning its E3-adjacent EA Play event, but declining to do a press conference.

That leaves Microsoft, Ubisoft, and now Bethesda as the last remaining publishers planning old-fashioned E3 stage shows. Microsoft, for its part, appears to be capitalizing on the opportunity and claims it will be "going big" this year.