Bethesda aren't planning a digital announce-o-rama for June

June is typically a big month for gaming announcements but as with many other things, the Covid-19 coronavirus is putting a hold on that. Whether at E3 proper or in the week leading up to it, big publishers like Bethesda use the month to show off plans for the year. E3 is cancelled, as are many other gaming events, and according to Bethesda it won't be replacing their usual E3-concurrent presentation with a digital version.

After the news of E3's cancellation, some of the big names like Microsoft and Ubisoft shared their intent pivot to some digital format for their own planned announcements. Bethesda's Pete Hines said today that "we will not host a digital showcase in June." Yes, I know it's April 1st but I don't figure this is a gag. He sounds quite serious, and making a joke about a pandemic that's been going on for months would be in poor taste, would it not?

Hines says that Bethesda do have "exciting things to share" and will be saying more "in the coming months." Perhaps they'll be spreading announcements out as individual bits of news rather than one big event where they shove Todd Howard out on stage for his yearly allowance of applause.

There are plenty of Bethesda games I'd been hoping to hear about during E3 so I'll admit to a bit of disappointment. This year seemed like a promising time to finally get concrete details about the space RPG Starfield. It would also be nice to see more of the spooky action game Ghostwire: Tokyo that was announced last year. It sounds like Bethesda still plan to tell us about all those things, just in some other format.

QuakeCon is also cancelled this year, which has hosted additional Bethesda Game Studios announcements in the past. It was scheduled for even later in the year than E3, during August.