2003 in video games

Legend

Events

• February 27 – Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosts 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; inducts Yu Suzuki of Sega to the AIAS Hall of Fame.
• March 6–9 – Game Developers Conference hosts 3rd annual Game Developers Choice Awards and Gama Network's 5th annual Independent Games Festival.
• April 1 – Enix Corporation and Square Co., Ltd. officially merge, forming Square Enix Co., Ltd.
• May 14–16 – 9th annual E3 held at Los Angeles Convention Center; 6th annual Game Critics Awards for the Best of E3.
• July – IEMA hosts 4th annual Executive Summit.
• July 16 – Interactive Digital Software Association renamed as Entertainment Software Association.
• September 12 – Valve releases their game distribution software Steam out of beta.
• October 1 – DreamWorks SKG and Tecmo announce a movie adaptation of the video game Fatal Frame has been fast-tracked with John Rogers and Steven Spielberg's involvement.
• October 12–18 – The 2003 World Cyber Games are held.
• October 20 – Families of Aaron Hamel and Kimberly Bede, two young adults shot by teens William and Josh Buckner, file a US$246 million lawsuit against developer Rockstar Games, publisher Take-Two Interactive Software, retailer Walmart, and console-maker Sony Computer Entertainment America.
• October 31 – British Academy of Film and Television Arts announces that nominations for the 6th annual BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards will instead be split between the 1st annual BAFTA Games Awards for video game publications and the BAFTA Interactive Awards for multimedia technologies; ceremonies to be held in February 2004.
• November – Kazushige Nojima resigns from Square Enix.
• December 2 – The inaugural Spike Video Game Awards are held.
• First PlayStation Portable prototype shown by Sony.
• Nintendo states that its next generation console would be fully compatible with the GameCube.

  Business

• Early 2003 – Compile goes defunct.
• February 19 – Microsoft announces a deal to buy Connectix Corporation.
• Take-Two Interactive buys TDK Mediactive, Inc.
• May 7 – Infogrames Entertainment, SA rebrands all its subsidiaries under the Atari brand.
• Enix Corporation officially absorbs Square Co., Ltd., forming Square Enix Co., Ltd.
• CNN Money reports that video games are a US$10 billion industry
• April – Pan European Game Information, a European video game content rating system, comes into use.
• May – The 3DO Company announces bankruptcy and closes down its New World Computing subsidiary.
• June 12 – Obsidian Entertainment founded.
• August 1 – Virgin Interactive is renamed to Avalon Interactive by its owner Titus Software.
• August – Microsoft announced ATI as the developer of the GPU for their next generation console, Project Xenon. Their previous contract with Nvidia was finished but the GPU of the Xbox continued in production.
• September – Silicon Dreams Studio goes defunct.
• December – Interplay closes its Black Isle Studios division.
• Late 2003 – Nintendo buys shares from Japanese toy and animation conglomerate Bandai making Nintendo one of Bandai's top 10 shareholders.
• Late 2003 – Data East goes defunct.

  Hardware

Discontinued

• March 23 – Nintendo stops production of the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color worldwide.
• September 23 – Nintendo stops production of the Family Computer and Super Famicom in Japan.

  Trends

Video game consoles

• Sony's PlayStation 2
• Nintendo's GameCube
• Microsoft's Xbox
• Sony's PlayStation

  Handheld game systems

• Nintendo's Game Boy Advance

  Best-selling video games

Japan

United States

PAL regions

Games with notable critical reception

Critically acclaimed games

''Famitsu''

Critically panned games

Notable releases