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Did E3 Just Gasp Its Last Breath?
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Jul 20, 2008 06:15 AM
from the my-last-breath-will-be-a-sigh dept.
from the my-last-breath-will-be-a-sigh dept.
Ian Lamont writes "This year's E3 is over, and there's already talk that this could be the last one. Even before the conference started, a slew of studios announced they wouldn't be taking part, citing high costs and other 'business reasons.' At the conference itself, 'there were no huge game announcements, and Microsoft didn't even bother having Bungie show up to talk about the next Halo release, claiming that the company wanted to "shorten the presentation."' Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said he 'hated' E3's new format, adding 'either we need to go back to the old E3, or we'll have to have our own private events.' Crave also noted there are no solid plans for next year's show. On the other hand, people have predicted E3's demise in previous years, and they turned out to be wrong."
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The End of E3? 164 comments
Ground Glass writes "Next Generation is reporting that E3 as we know it is finished. The games industry has lost its most glamorous show." Update: 07/30 21:18 GMT by Z : A reader wrote in with a link to an Ars Technica story saying that the event is to be downsized, not cancelled. From that article: "At the end of the day, the reason is very simple: ten years ago, you needed a big trade show to generate buzz and hype. It used to be that COMDEX was a special event because so much new stuff was unveiled, and this was the only way to see it. Now, however, information comes down the pipe faster than ever, and companies are wondering if there's really any benefit to spending the big money on displays only to share the floor with other competitors looking to out-wow attendees." I guess we'll see in a day or two what the future of E3 looks like.
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"E For All" Game Expo Withers, PAX Thrives 64 comments
After the continued struggles of E3 this year, it looks like another IDG-based games conference will have its own troubles. BigDownload reports that most major game manufacturers are skipping E For All, in part due to their focus on the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) and BlizzCon (which will be televised). E for All will have major presentations by Microsoft and EA, but you'll have to go to PAX to see events and exhibits from other big publishers; for example, the playable Jumpgate Evolution demo, the Guild Wars tournament, or the Omegathon. The Seattle Times ran a story about Penny Arcade's creators and how PAX came into existence. Further competition for E For All is coming from the Tokyo Game Show, which runs in the beginning of October.
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E3 Coming Back Big In 2009 35 comments
Newsweek reports that next year's E3 will be expanding its attendance cap to 40,000 in an attempt to return as the premiere large-scale gaming expo. E3 scaled back its operations over the last few years, leading some to speculate that it was outliving its usefulness. This year, according to E3's organizers, we can "expect a boat load of press conferences on Monday during the day and on Tuesday morning." Newsweek also claims E3 will be opening to the public for the first time, allowing fans inside for the last two days of the event. However, G4's coverage says that while the vetting process for attendees will be eased, the event still won't be open to the public. An official announcement will be made tomorrow by the Entertainment Software Association.
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Old Vs. New (Score:5, Informative)
New E3: New games, for the PR/Hype machines, and coverage by journalists pretending to be gamers.
Yeah, no idea why it's dying...
Re:Old Vs. New (Score:5, Insightful)
Old E3: New games, for gamers, and coverage by gamers. New E3: New games, for the PR/Hype machines, and coverage by journalists pretending to be gamers. Yeah, no idea why it's dying...
No problem is that E3 was always supposed to be a industry only sort of thing. To help show off the new & upcoming stuff to get retailers interested to buy up these new games for the holidays. But people posing as journalists kept getting in and with the internet it just got out of hand.
It became less about games and about how much you spent on half naked girls for sweaty virgins to harass. There is no qualification for being a journalist on the internet, which is good for a lot of things, but it's not good for E3 as it was taking the focus off games.
The industry still has a lot of growing up to do. The fact it's probably the only indutry that can't seem to hold a major business event without turning it into softcore porn should concern people.
As much as people want to tout that gaming is growing it's not really. The numbers they use against movies includes everything including controllers, power leads, etc. We're losing imagination and genres because everything is so similar that they dare not risk doing something new. Plus they have to raise prices to keep going and we can probably expect price to rise during the next generation.
Does that sound like a healthy world domination industry? I don't think so. The only thing they do have going for them is that gamers do tend to be more obsessive about their hobby than others so they can count on there being a certain level of sales.
In fact I think the reason they taken to pussifying the term hardcore gamer into core gamer is because it doesn't mean the same thing anymore. It means that's their core audience that will eat up any old shit they shovel they sell as long as it's a sequel, features lots of guns and gang of hulking space marines of questionable sexuality.
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Re:Old Vs. New (Score:5, Funny)
You say that as if it's a bad thing.
I'd suggest that the more major business events that turn into softcore porn, the better.
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Re:Old Vs. New (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever go to a Motorcycle show? Seriously, they are crawling with scantily clad females, along with lots and lots of outrageous costumes, posters, and artwork on the bikes themselves. Heck, I wonder if say the makers of GTA or the like wouldn't do well to get a booth at one of these events.
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Gaming has the same problem as US politics. No one actually cares about all the options or who is actually better. It's all about who can blow the biggest wad of cash to say they're the best.
The hysteria tha
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You say that as if it's a bad thing.
Exactly - the babes at one of these events is the most action some of these geeks will ever get. Let them live a little.
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Sorry, now real tech there - so it's lost on most geeks. E3 has it all - babes AND tech ftw
Re:Old Vs. New (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just the most horrible legacy of the Victorian era. "In order to be legitimately intellectual, you have to be chaste and restrained." Horse shit, and further, geeks ought to damn well know better. All that legitimate, intellectual Sci-Fi and Fantasy geekdom is associated with? Gee, no deviant or open sexuality there. No sir.
Oh yeah, except that's one of both Sci-Fi's and Fantasy's major features! Do I even need to justify this? Come on! Robert "Nudist, Promiscuous, Free Love" Heinlein? David "Chimpanzee Strippers" Brin? I can keep going all night folks, those are just two examples from different eras of Sci-Fi. Now, except for a smaller number of respected authors (because let's face it, the line between low-brow fantasy and straight up "Romance" novels is pretty thin), Fantasy has suffered from the blight of Tolkien's legacy, and that sad old fart was a totally misplaced Victorian.
The further and further I get from being prepubescent, the lower and lower my estimation of Tolkien falls. The totally neutered picture of middle earth he paints is really depressing, or alternatively, hilariously homosexual (twelve male dwarves and a histrionic male hobbit - let the innuendo begin). Nobody in his world ever gets to have a non-tragic, positive sexual relationship. Its terribly sad. Why shouldn't there be wild (but female positive, intellectually and emotionally gratifying) wild Elf sex (or wild human-elf sex for that matter) the same way we get human sexuality portrayed in Stranger in A Strange Land? Of course we do, but its rarely handled by writers we actually want to put pen to paper.
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Re:Old Vs. New (Score:5, Funny)
The industry still has a lot of growing up to do. The fact it's probably the only indutry that can't seem to hold a major business event without turning it into softcore porn should concern people.
You, sir, appear to be forgetting the porn industry. Turning business events into softcore (or hardcore) porn is what they do.
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Re:Old Vs. New (Score:5, Interesting)
Here here! This year's E3 was a success in working as it was designed. Restricted crowds meant that journalists and buyers could easily see (and try!) everything they needed to, and unlike last year everything was located close-by so that people weren't so spread apart. For an event that's about the quick & effective dissemination of information, this year was marked by... the quick & effective dissemination of information.
The only problem with this year's event was that there was very little to show. The few publishers that had stuff were tempted to throw their own events so that they could hog the spotlight for the day, and everyone else is mid-development cycle after the hulking mass of games released in 2007. The fact that publishers didn't have much to show off and everyone was accordingly unexcited has nothing to do with E3, that's a matter of poor planning on their part.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The industry still has a lot of growing up to do.
The nature of the discipline of game development is that it requires creativity, and creativity and eccentricity/immaturity often go hand in hand.
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By that logic Game Cock should have the most creative titles rather than some tard in a chicken c
Re:Old Vs. New (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact it's probably the only indutry that can't seem to hold a major business event without turning it into softcore porn should concern people.
You obviously have never been to any major car convention.
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Games, on the other hand, I love so I rather play games then pretend the girls standing near them find me interesting.
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Re:Old Vs. New (Score:4, Insightful)
> to get retailers interested to buy up these new games for the holidays. But people posing as journalists kept getting in
> and with the internet it just got out of hand.
Except that when the guys running the show actually took steps to return E3 to what it was "always supposed to be", it collapsed. It seems to me that the real problem was everybody thought E3 was supposed to be what you're describing, less a spectacle than a trade show, when in actuality E3 really WAS about the spectacle. It was about generating hype and buzz, and getting interest directed at a title not by selling it to retailers (as claimed) but by making a name for the title among gamers. E3 got people's attention, the way all carnival sideshows do. All that other stuff happening in the meetings, that was all important, but the soul of the show was
Not that E3 didn't have problems. It WAS getting out of hand. But I think tbe real problem is nobody recognized the purpose of E3 had shifted, so when they tried to fix it, they broke it. E3 had become a glitzy hypnotic attention-grabber for every gamer who speaks English, across the whole world. All those retailers, etc? They looked to E3 to make decisions because they were following the crowd, not because they were the crowd.
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Shot in the arm for PAX? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's really missing... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's really missing... (Score:5, Informative)
People laugh, but hot women are a huge part of the Entertainment industry, getting rid of them was dumb move.
Seriously, when was the last time you've heard "I'm sorry, there are just too many hot women here. They have to go."
Parent
I thought... (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought last year was billed as the last E3 after it was done...
E3 == BSD (Score:2)
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and soon to be hijacked by apple or some other steve jobs venture?
The Reason The Execs Are Unhappy (Score:5, Interesting)
This was an exceptionally insightful comment made on Voodoo Extreme that I am reposting, with full credit to the author. It hits the nail on the head, so to speak.
Reposting content?! Sacrilege! (Score:2)
Tangential Comment Ahead warning duly served:
MockHysteria
/MockHysteria
Who cares if you are "giving credit"? How dare you post exclusive content from another site so only they can get the eyeball views on their ads from their exclusive? I'll only accept this post if you also post the *permission* granted to repost the comment.
Or is the secret that no one outside the **AAs, **Alliances, and certain other entities is really that rabid about copyrights?
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You say that as if it's a bad thing.
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Re:The Reason The Execs Are Unhappy (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, given how little information has actually been released about any games shown at E3, were there "actual questions" being asked?
I don't feel particularly represented by a journalist who isn't a geek. Having said journalists be the only people who can attend an event means I'll get more information on 3Q earnings, less information on the games being presented. You can see a lot of that in the fact that most of the games shown had no playable demos whatsoever. What's the point? Most of the journalists attending probably don't play games.
So, yeah, I'd like there to be pudgy star wars nerds ogling booth babes in between really hard hitting questions about whether or not the next LucasArts game is going to appeal to him. Because if anyone in the world is going to be able to ask questions relevant to the game, it's that guy.
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Unfortunately, actual questions posed by other business people . Which has extremely limited marketing potential.
As a "consumer" I don't really care how much money they expect to make, or what a "price point" is. I care what the product is and how much it will cost me.
So, if they wanted E3 to be an industry circle-jerk, then they can do that and see how it works out. But if what they really wanted was something
Re:The Reason The Execs Are Unhappy (Score:5, Insightful)
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E3 is dying (Score:5, Funny)
E3 is dying, Google trends [google.com] confirms it.
Re:E3 is dying (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:E3 is dying (Score:5, Funny)
aww, come on! Your ID is too small for not knowing that it has to be Netcraft!
Quite the contrary, you must be new here. Netcraft's sole purpose is to confirm the death of BSD. Since BSD is dying, and there can be no doubt about that, Netcraft's days are also numbered. Thus we must seek out alternatives in what little time remains.
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Surely you're aware that almost all of Netcraft's analysis concerns servers, not visitors.
Google (with all their user search data) are in a much better position to comment on the popularity of E3.
(Netcraft does have site visit data collected from their toolbar but google's sample is much larger and less biased.)
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We can also see there that GDC (the quiet conference with good independent developers in decent numbers) and PAX (a party without the media focus on new stuff to get in the way) are each doing well.
I like to think that E3's two conflicting halves are now split, as they should be.
Format is unworkable (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft probably had the best show of the three big companies purely for the FFXIII coup (biggest announcement of the show was a port. That about sums it up) but still took a few hits on it's blatent ripping off of Eyetoy and Mii's. Not to mention the pulling back of the Bungie announcement which was a smack in the face to fans. Overall though they same out slightly stronger than they went in.
Sony's was mediocre. Most the time they talked about games we knew were coming and the new announcements were only pre-rendered footage. They came out the same as they went in.
Then there's Nintendo. They couldn't have chosen a worse strategy if they'd tried. The Wiimote add on was interesting but they showed it off with yet another mini-game collection. The Wii is hardly lacking in these. Worse still, Wii music was unvieled and shown to be a pretty rubbish toy that looks like it'll be fun for 5 minutes at most before you never play it again. Animal Crossing was a reasonable unveiling but everyone knew it was coming and it was just too similar to the GC and DS versions with no innovation other than a well designed mic (that apparently is great for picking up voices across the room.
Nintendo fans were promised hard core games to fill the empty schedule up till xmas and we get more of the same crap we've been seeing from lazy third party publishers and Animal Crossing. Nintendo have serously alienated a good portion of their gamer fans and lots of people will either have their console gathering dust for a long time now or simply flog their console.
Overall E3 should get gamers excited but all this show has done is make them bored and that can't be healthy for the industry.
Sure it may have only cost them $500,000 rather than $2,000,000 for a stand but what good is that if you get very poor PR and make people wonder why they have your console over another.
Hopefully they'll pull something out for Leipzig or else it looks like we'll have to wait till TGS for reasonably exciting announcements.
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as long as it gets someone to buy a wii, nintendo is happy. unlike microsoft or sony, they make a profit on each device sold rather then toss the device at the customers and hope they buy enough content to make up for the "gift"...
It's different now. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since then, I've graduated and become an actual developer. I go to two events a year. PAX and GDC. E3 is obviously something I could go to, and I might if I was in the area. But it doesn't have much draw for me anymore. And I could honestly care less about the booth babes. I want actual content, and E3 isn't even a shadow of what it once was. That would be PAX. I get PAX for the consumery-side of me, and I get GDC for the professional side. There's no place for E3 anymore.
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all it will take (Score:4, Interesting)
This year there were reduced presentations, next year, it may be that many big companies don't go at all, so visitor attendance will reduce.
That'll be what kills it when it dies, because the attendee's won't think the price worth paying if too many major players aren't coming.
Since they will have to find somewhere to showcase their products if it does die, there will either be a new event created, or they will find some other way of achieving the same goal.
Personally I'd like to see smaller events round the globe. Speaking as a brit who doesn't like travelling into the prison state any more, I can't see myself attending any large events which are US only.
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>Since they will have to find somewhere to showcase their products if it does die, there will either be a new event created, or they will find some other way of achieving the same goal.
From what I've read here and elsewhere, the point is that E3 is dying because there are zillions of other places to hype a new game. E3 represents a significant expense for companies: they have to rent the booth space, fly people in, house them, etc., and they get zero dollars of productive time from their workers during
Its partially the economy (Score:3, Insightful)
As an economy tanks, 'discretionary entertainment' funds is the first to go.
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Bread and circuses!
We won't care what the people in charge are doing as long as we have our bread and circuses!
Jump the shark (Score:2)
Thank you for not using the overused "E3 has jumped the shark" type title for the article!
Why not have two E3s? (Score:2)
One for journalists (original and the last two E3s) and one for pure gamers (old E3 style)?
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
On the other hand, you could just stop being such a condescending prick.
Nice trolling (Score:4, Insightful)
What next, explain what the hell NASA is?
Maybe they should mention when they found water on mars they don't mean the candy?
and E3 stands for Electronic Entertainment Expo, bit to long for a headline and anyway then you would have been trolling about how it doesn't include music or video but just games despite the fact the former come in electronics as well.
Parent
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Worse yet, the full name is now "E3 Media & Business Summit."
My god, I swear a necktie appeared around my neck when you said that.