With E3 2012 less than three months away, a ton of game developers and publishers are making plans to attend the single biggest yearly event in the game industry. Neowin has been checking the official E3 2012 exhibitors list to see if any new companies will be attending the show for the first time.
Zynga, the highly successful free-to-play game publisher of titles like Farmville, Cityville and Words with Friends, is listed on the E3 2012 web site as an exhibitor this year. If true, the company credited with helping to launch Facebook as a game platform will making its first official appearance at E3 when it opens its doors June 5th at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Neowin tried to get an official comment from a Zynga spokesperson about the E3 2012 exhibitor listing but was unable to do so by the time of this news post.
Other companies that have attended E3 in the past won't be there this year. An Atari spokesperson confirmed to us this week that the publisher won't be exhibiting at E3 this June for the first time in several years. The company has been getting slowly out of releasing major retail games and lately has been concentrating on releasing titles for mobile phone users. One exception is Atari's plan to distribute Tera, a Korean-made fantasy MMO which will be launched in early May in the US.
Another publisher which has appeared at E3 in the past but is not currently on the 2012 exhibitor list is the free-to-play PC game company Nexon which is the home of games such as Combat Arms, Vindictus and others. However, a spokesperson for Nexon told Neowin this week it was still considering whether or not it would attend E3 this year so it's possible it will show up after all.
CCP Games is not listed on the E3 2012 exhibitor list but a company spokesperson told us that the publisher of the popular space based MMO EVE Online will be there in some capacity. The spokesperson told us that it will team up with Sony to show off the upcoming free-to-play sci-fi shooter Dust 514.
It looks like two major game publishers that have not attended E3 in the past several years have once again decided to bypass the 2012 edition of the show. NCsoft has confirmed to Neowin it won't be attending the event even though it has one of its biggest game launches in years coming up later in 2012; the long awaited fantasy MMO sequel Guild Wars 2. NCsoft's spokesperson told us it will instead attend events "that allow us to share our games directly with gamers."
Blizzard, which will release Diablo III on May 15 and has a number of other games in development, also has not attended E3 in the past several years and it is not on the E3 2012 exhibitor list as of this writing. So far, Blizzard has yet to respond to our inquiries on this issue.
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