Don't Expect Star Citizen At The E3 PC Gaming Show

Cloud Imperium Games has been quiet these few months, mostly keeping to their community and focusing on refining and getting new content up and out to the public. If you were hoping to see what they had to offer at this year's E3, you'll be sorely disappointed because they won't be attending.

According to Game Informer, Cloud Imperium Games had previously revealed that they would only be attending E3 in the capacity of being on the PC Gaming Show, a dedicated segment of E3 spotlighting PC gaming hardware and software. It was a bit cheap and embarrassing last year, but it was also informative and gave the spotlight to quite a few games on the PC roster. Hopefully that courtesy extends throughout this year as well, where we'll get to see a ton of new PC exclusives and a look at some of the technology powering those titles.

One of the scheduled games that won't be appearing is Star Citizen, which has amassed more than $114 million in crowdfunding. Why? Well, according to a Cloud Imperium Representative, they're going to be focusing on GamesCom later this year, which takes place in Cologne, Germany. The rep stated...

We are not able to have Chris at the PC Gaming Show due to his commitments in the UK making the game,” [...] “I informed PC Gamer of this several weeks ago. It’s important to note that we were never committed to be at E3 as an exhibitor or in any other capacity (except for the PCG show). In fact we’ve never had a booth at E3. Our focus has pretty much always been Gamescom, and it will be again this year.”

Chris Roberts focusing on the development of Star Citizen in the U.K., refers to the work on Squadron 42, the single-player campaign for the game where top Hollywood talent was brought in to help bring the campaign to life. Actors such as Gillian Anderson, Gary Oldman, Mark Strong and Mark Hamill suited up and provided performance capture for the Squadron 42 segment.

Game Informer notes that Cloud Imperium Games is hard at work at attempting to bring the single-player story mode to Star Citizen by the end of 2016.

We haven't seen much of the single-player mode and there hasn't been a lot of promotion of yet, yet. Hopefully we'll get to see the mode in action and maybe a release window at this year's GamesCom in Cologne, Germany.

It's a real shame, though, that Star Citizen won't be at this year's E3 event. We've had a number of high-profile pull-outs, with Nintendo's NX being one of the most infamous at this point. The new game console/device is scheduled to launch next year in March of 2017 but we have no details whatsoever on the device, and most gamers were expecting to learn more at this year's E3. That turned out to be a bust.

In the case of Star Citizen, they didn't have any plans on hosting a booth at the trade show in Los Angeles, California, but Cloud Imperium Games' head honcho Chris Roberts was at least going to appear on the PC Gaming Show to talk up the game and maybe show some new footage. I guess we'll just have to wait for GamesCom to get our fill of new Star Citizen content.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.