Yesterday, Activision announced they would not be present at E3 and on the heels of that, both NCSoft and Foundation9 Entertainment have made similar statements.

Foundation9 seems to feel the price for attending E3 is too high compared to what the company could get out of it. They also stated their decision had nothing to do with Activision-Blizzard not attending or dropping out of the ESA.

NCSoft on the other hand has had some problems with the ESA in the past (anyone remember the heated confrontation between ESA and NCSoft at the end of E3 2006 where NCSoft was fined with $5.000 for a noise violation?) and states that the timing of E3 isn't in line with their products so that it would make no sense to attend.

I wonder whether any other companies will decide to stay away from E3.

I can imagine that if some of the biggest American companies decide to a no-show, there's little interest from Asian or European publishers to attend. After all, there's still the Tokyo Game Show and Leipzig's Games Convention.

In other news: