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."
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.
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.
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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This has me looking forward to the big MC show in Timmonium MD next February.
Seriously though, the whole industry emphasis on the "Badass Biker" image has caused the industry to turn out mostly expensive toys, either overweight lumbering chrome encrusted cruisers, crotch rockets more at home on the racetrack than the street, and dirt bikes. Not that these categories don't have their own unique appeal, but you have to look pretty hard at the typical motorcycle dealer to find anything new that could be remot
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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
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Sorry, now real tech there...
I see you've never been to a porn convention.
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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Here here!
"Hear, hear!"
Which makes more sense from a "you guys should listen to that!" perspective?
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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
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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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>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.
Uhh, cars, motorcycles, and boats aren't made by industries? News to me.
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It got out of hand? It got successful. As for booth babes (and noise) .... being stricter with rules of conduct for stand holders and tightening the reigns on credentials are two different things. They could have done one without the other.
They chose to do both, I can't fathom why ... it's obviously not going to be making them more money.
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CES gets by fine with some level of maturity not seen at E3 for ages. Gaming is still being aimed almost exclusively at teenage boys (excluding Nintendo) which was fine when I was a teenage boy but I'm not anymore and I've been playing games since the early 80's. Sadly, aside from graphics, not much has changed aside from things becoming more homogeneous over the year
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I'm willing to bet the softcore porn industry's events often contain copious amounts of softcore porn too.
See, gaming isn't the only one!
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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E3 was always supposed to be a industry only sort of thing
It seems like they have started making it more like you suggest, but the interest in it has started to drop off, so now they want to change it back. Hmm, let's think about that.
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Exactly.....
E3 hype, gamer buzz, swag hording and hot booth chicks was the most exciting part. We gotta get gamer hands on controllers and they need to be blogging there asses off. Of course company PR reps are going to make there games sound like the shiz, this is what they are paid for.
We need real gamers floating around.
Checks and Balances
Combine It With CES (Score:1, Redundant)
Shot in the arm for PAX? (Score:5, Interesting)
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PAX doesn't need a shot in the arm, it just needs its directors to stick to the format they've established. Oh, and reports of hilariously misguided coattail riders [penny-arcade.com].
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PAX != E3 (Score:2)
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What's really missing... (Score:5, Funny)
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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."
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From your wife at a party...?
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Booth babes!
I believe that's properly spelled "boof babes" to get across the common pronunciation.
The last E3 I went to was in 2001. I can't imagine an E3 without boof babes. Really, it's not just the babes, it's the aspect of spectacle. Waiting in line for a chance to see the beta of that MS WW2 FPS game was like a day at disneyland. And across the street, from E3, in the GodGames "promised lot", where they served booze and fired T-shirts out of a shirt cannon before showing a VERY early demo of GTA III on a big scr
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Why not Booth Boys?
Oh yeah. Right.
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)
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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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http://www.google.com/trends?q=slashdot&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 [google.com]
Yeah, E3 is dying but so is slashdot because there is so many "+5 Funny" Hunters.
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"...
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I know nobody reads nintendo power but you should read up on Mad World... It's a pretty damn hard core game.
There was also about 6-7 pages detailing new games coming out for the Wii... The only bad thing about the Wii right now is that everybody ignored it at first; that's why they're not getting many new third party games. Everybody headed ass-first to bury themselves in PS3/360 developpement, thinking "hah, nintendo? yeah my ass.".
And of course it does take a while for first party games
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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Actually I found the new format E3 way better (going as press). This was my first one since it shrunk and I found it much easier to check out games and get more time with developers. I've been thinking more and more in the last few years it should try and evolve with the times to become more of a press event and less of a consumer/developer event - GDC kicks its ass in terms of developer content anyway.
It was a little on the small side - there just weren't that many titles available (especially in PC games,
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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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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.
You mean returning to your prison state right?
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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.
You mean returning to your prison state right?
You forget, you've got the TSA.
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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
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I realise you're probably being inflammatory, but as an American who travels extensively, I personally find the UK's Big Brother obsession (e.g., the use of cameras on an ever increasing number of public spaces and motorways) to be far more invasive.
Oh, I agree, (also, I thought after hitting post that prison state was a bit much, sorry), the camara use is absurd here.
I acknowledge that the UK has its own 'eeek, punish our own citizens because of terrorists' thing going. I've been stopped and searched a number of times whilst out walking simply because I refuse to carry ID in my own country.
Also I've long since stopped travelling on internal UK flights, because the security process is unbearable.
Its probably just as bad for a non UK resident coming int
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!
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Tell that to starbucks, for example, as they are now closing stores.
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Its discretionary funds at any cost.
And while it may be food, but its still entertainment.
Solution.. (Score:1)
Of course (Score:1)
There's a simple solution (Score:1)
The fork already happened. (Score:2)
Was it really that bad? (Score:1, Interesting)
I've never been to E3, and am just a game player that checks up on the info coming out of it at various websites. In all honesty, from my end of the spectrum I didn't really see anything majorly different. The only thing lacking was the announcements of "games so epic they'll blow your head off just thinking about them, but they won't be playable for another five years!" I really think if anything could be said about this E3 being slow, is mostly that this is just a slower point in gaming where 90% of th
But the industry is up (Score:1)
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)?
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Simple: Biggest announcement? (Score:1)
To answer this question, we just ask ourselves "what was the biggest announcement at this year's E3?". I really can't think of anything that wasn't announced last year (really the only thing I liked was Spore, which I plan to get for PC when it comes out).
Nothing groundbreaking was really announced that people didn't already know. Microsoft announced Gears of War II (which is a dumb Xbox game that EVERYONE already knows is coming out soon).
The only announcement I didn't expect that I WAS looking forward to
Soon as that guy... (Score:1)
E3 = Apple (Score:1)
E3 is the new Apple. It will continue to have its "final" conferences for at least 5 years by my guess.
E3 stands for useless now (Score:2)
I found it strange that Blizzard announced Diablo 3 several weeks before E3. It seems to me that, that would be something that in the past they would have waited for E3 to announce.
To me that's a good sign that E3 has become irrelevant. Like a lot of other people have said, gaming websites are a much better venue for announcing upcoming games and consoles.
I imagine in the future the only people attending E3 will be Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. They'll only be attending to announce their new consoles which
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To be fair, there was a moderate amount of nice announcements at E3. They might not have been the unveiling of a brand new game, but
GOOD. (Score:2)
E3 was terrible for gamers, except the elite few who had the magic press pass hookup or those who wanted to spend ungodly amounts on a badge. Tokyo Game Show on the other hand, was 1,000¥ or TEN DOLLARS. Twelve with tax. Even at 20 or 30 or 50 bucks, that kind of pricing would beat the living crap out of E3's monumental fuck you to gamers. It's like ESA hated gamers, but loved the gamer money and game industry money. You can love me for my money, just don't think that it lets you get away with spou
Predictions... (Score:2)
E3's death has only been predicted for 2 years now... This year and last. That's because it was the previous year they announced the format change.
E3's creators are unable to deal with that their show WAS and keep trying to make it what they want.
Newsflash: Developers don't WANT what E3 wants. Developers want a way to tell the entire public what's new and exciting. E3 demands that they only tell journalists, who then tell the public. So the last 2 years have seen reduced presentations, with some devel
The industry needs something like E3 (Score:1)
I really hope the current attempt at E3 dies. The old E3 format had issues but it was actual an important symbol for the industry. I wrote a post yesterday about why the games industry needs E3. [alwaysongames.com] In it I argue that E3 was presented gaming culture, whether you like it or not.
And instead of using it as a forum to celebrate gaming and welcome the tons of gamers who flock there trying to sneak in, ESA ruined it by trying to make it focused on the business side of the convention.
PAX is becoming much more popu
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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.
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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.
Worse yet, the full name is now "E3 Media & Business Summit."
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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.
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