It was canceled again but this time because it seems all the major players wouldn’t have been there this year … and well it seems it’s been hurling towards a demise for the past decade or so between competing shows and the companies doing their own thing I’m wondering if its finally over ,
E3 as the video game event it started out as has been dead for a long time. When they cancelled it in 2020 most journalists thought it was a blessing in disguise after how miserable and empty it was in 2019. Nobody is interested in paying the ESA for publicity they can get for free on their own.
I think there is still a market for an industry event where publishers and developers and press can connect, but they have to give up on it being a yearly blockbuster event. It has to be smaller, cheaper, and less open to the public.
Consider that E3 started in 1995. It was a completely different world back then. We barely even had a World Wide Web. I think its relevance just isn’t there anymore.
Video game companies just do their own special presentations now. Nintendo has been doing several Nintendo Directs a year to just put out their own announcements.
There just isn’t a need for a big show like this.
This is probably a big part of it. The other day, Ubisoft had a presentation about all the new Division related stuff they were planning (DLC, season content, multiple spin-off titles, graphic novels, etc). Once upon a time this might have been a trade show thing. Now you just spend a couple hours on Twitch showing off your stuff (and upload the promo reels to YouTube). You have more control, it’s cheaper and IGN & PCGamer are still going to write stories about it. The only benefit I can see for the trade show route is maybe people are more attuned to gaming news since it’s an event? But the flipside is the potential to be drowned out and lost by news of a new Mario Kart game.
Well, it’s official.
darn i wanted to go at least once …