GDC and GTC cancelled due to Coronavirus concerns
Even if you avoid the news, it's almost impossible to avoid hearing about the Covid-19 coronavirus. Meanwhile, the world is on watch for a potential pandemic. For us here at the TechReport, though, we necessarily have to narrow the focus to the way the virus affects the tech industry. This week, it's all about canceled and delayed events. Nvidia is turning its GPU Technology Conference into an online-only event, while the Game Developers Conference is on indefinite hold.
Nvidia announced yesterday that its yearly GTC event, which was to be held in San Jose from March 22 to 25, will be held entirely online due to concerns surrounding Covid-19. The GPU maker said in its press release that founder Jensen Huang will deliver a live-streamed keynote address.
Anyone who registered for a GTC pass will receive a refund. Like Huang's keynote address, Nvidia says it will publish other speaker talks online in the weeks to come, as well as giving software developers time to chat with Nvidia researchers and engineers.
GTC's cancelation follows GDC's last weekGDC, also originally scheduled for March, is on hold. The event was set to run from March 16-20 just a couple of hours away in San Francisco. The past few weeks have seen major players in the game space such as Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts, Unity Technologies, and more pull out of the event. The companies have all cited coronavirus as a major reason, similar to that of Nvidia's statement on GTC.
"After close consultation with our partners in the game development industry, and community around the world, we've made the difficult decision to postpone the Game Developers Conference this March," GDC organizers said in a statement late last week. The organizers intend to host a GDC event later in the summer. That makes the assumption that the concerns about coronavirus recede and that developers are willing to find a spot for the show between E3, San Diego Comic-Con, and Gamescom in June, July, and August respectively. And that's assuming those events remain unaffected.
Both GDC and GTC are important industry-side events. While both shows offer enticing previews and insights, these events exist primarily for game developers; these are events for learning and networking. The side effects of these event cancellations will be tough to suss out, but developers will certainly feel them in different ways, whether that's developers struggling more with raytracing on AMD and Nvidia cards or smaller game developers not getting the chance to network (and oftentimes losing out on travel costs they can't recoup).
Hardware shortages likelyElsewhere in the industry, analysts are predicting big side effects that we'll see at the consumer level, such as limited availability of next-gen consoles, PC components, and PCs in general. Some effects are already visible, such as small price hikes on some display types and 
None of this should take away from the human danger of the virus, of course; it's impossible, though, to ignore the ways it could and already is affecting the tech industry and tech consumers.
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