Did E3 Just Gasp Its Last Breath? 142
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."
I thought... (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought last year was billed as the last E3 after it was done...
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.
Its partially the economy (Score:3, Insightful)
As an economy tanks, 'discretionary entertainment' funds is the first to go.
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.
Re:The Reason The Execs Are Unhappy (Score:2, Insightful)
But, hey, what do I know, right? I just purchase the products.
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.
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.
Re:The Reason The Execs Are Unhappy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Reason The Execs Are Unhappy (Score:3, Insightful)
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.