Xbox and Bethesda will hold joint E3 2021 conference

In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty confirmed what we all expected for E3 2021. Bethesda joined the Xbox family earlier this year so this shouldn't be much of a surprise. Xbox also announced quite early they were a partner for E3 2021 which essentially confirmed their conference.

E3 2021 will be another virtual event like in 2020 due to the pandemic. Xbox and Bethesda haven't announced when their conference will be yet. As it stands now, the first conference will be from Ubisoft and held on June 12. In previous years both Bethesda and Xbox hold their conferences on the same day and are usually some of the first events for the show. It seems safe to assume the Xbox and Bethesda show will be held towards the start of the event but there's no way to know yet.

What can we expect from the Xbox and Bethesda E3 2021 Show?

So far we don't know very much about the upcoming event. Xbox and Bethesda will be more willing to discuss the specifics as the show date approaches. For now, however, there are a few questions that can be somewhat answered.

The Structure of the Show

While we know Xbox and Bethesda will be holding a joint conference, there's no news yet about how they'll be structuring the show. It's possible the news from both publishers will be interwoven or they might opt to do announce the news in a more orderly fashion. Hopefully, the two publishers will confirm this soon for those who are only interested in watching the Bethesda show.

Date and Time

This is something that will be announced within the next two weeks. As mentioned before, the first scheduled conference is on June 12th. While Xbox and Bethesda have previously been early conferences, the fact the publishers are doing a joint event might move them back a bit. Organising a joint event could take them a bit longer to do. During the French interview, Matt Booty stated the show will take place sometime between June 12th and June 15th. So while we don't have an exact date and time yet, we have a rough placeholder.

The Games

We're all eagerly awaiting news from Bethesda about Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6. Jason Schreier, a reporter for Bloomberg, posted to Twitter recently stating that Starfield won't be released until 2022. According to him, Bethesda plans to tease a release date for the upcoming game at E3 2021.

Still hoping to see a little more of this at the show.

For Xbox games, we can expect news for Halo Infinite, Fable 4 and the new Forza Motorsport games. We can probably assume Xbox will include a section about future console updates and maybe a Minecraft section as well. The publisher hasn't provided many hints about what they'll be bringing to the event.

Will Bethesda ever have another standalone E3?

It's difficult to know the future. Bethesda might never have another separate E3 event or maybe they'll decide to have their own one again next year. We don't know. What we do know however is that Bethesda is still hosting QuakeCon. QuakeCon 2021 will be held digitally later this year in August. The Bethesda event is incredibly popular and has been around since 1996. It's incredibly well-established and ending this tradition would upset the thousands of gamers who attend the annual event. Bethesda also makes regular announcements later in the year at QuakeCon making it a major standalone event for the company.

Even if Bethesda no longer hosts their own standalone E3 conferences in the future, it seems unlikely QuakeCon is going anywhere.

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