EA's Peter Moore: 'I'm not sure video game press conferences have a future.'

I think he has a point. In a time when there are so many different ways to get your message and product out to consumers, and in an industry whose consumers skew so young, a buttoned up structured press conference seems like such a dated concept. Look at the reactions on here or around the Internet when these things are going on, all everyone wants is trailer/game footage one after another do you really need to hold a press conference to present that in the age of twitch and YouTube?
 
Hell, EA's conferences have always been a mess to attend and terrible in content. They don't even have a present.
 
Said it already on Twitter, but they would if EA wasn't showing their sports line-up in every years press conference. You have a better line-up than that... Show it.
 
EA conferences are boring and samey years after years, anyway.
I don't see Sony/Microsoft dropping them anytime soon though, they still have a big impact if you have the content to go with it.
 
Sounds about right, especially press conferences @ Germany/Europe. About as underwhelming as it gets and can't be too cheap.
 
I actually enjoyed this year's Gamescom, no shit and just announcements and new footage. Conferences are like 50% fluff and 50% stuff. This way, I don't have to suffer through the crap.
 
cartographer said:
In this thread people will far overstate the impact and reach of E3 stage shows on the wider game-buying public.
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It impacts the hardcore audience who has a ripple effect on casual core. Just look at MS Xbox 1 reveal and E3, that was the start of their downfall even before the product was on the shelves.
 
Conferences are still the perfect way to create hype before the announcements, social medias are of course very important but I see them to be more indicated for marketing and to discuss about things after they have been announced.
The examples made in the article are a bit flawed.
The reason Sony and Microsoft didn't have a Gamescom conference is because Gamescom has a terrible timing to make new announcements.
Sony is hosting a Playstation Meeting in September.
Nintendo didn't have anything to announce at E3 that's why they focused on Zelda. When they announce the NX it's not like they'll just make an article on a blog or post a video on Youtube, they'll have a conference as well.
So basically Ea should just talk for itself, their decisions are their own.
 
E3 is way too big to drop. A Youtuber isn't going to have the same reach when playing a game on social media as E3 does.

Napalm_Frank said:
It impacts the hardcore audience who has a ripple effect on casual core. Just look at MS Xbox 1 reveal and E3, that was the start of their downfall even before the product was on the shelves.
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Exactly. People who barely followed video games knew about that shit and still do. People were commentating about E3 at my work, and barely any of them play video games more than a few hours a year.

That being said, it's probably better for bigger companies like Sony and MS than it is for smaller dudes to show up anymore that live in a niche. If you aren't on mainstage, it's kind of a waste I'd think.
 
Ninja Scooter said:
I think he has a point. In a time when there are so many different ways to get your message and product out to consumers, and in an industry whose consumers skew so young, a buttoned up structured press conference seems like such a dated concept. Look at the reactions on here or around the Internet when these things are going on, all everyone wants is trailer/game footage one after another do you really need to hold a press conference to present that in the age of twitch and YouTube?
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Correct, correct, correct. It is antiquated and needs to be tossed. There are better ways, and those already doing it are already getting the work done and benefiting from it.

Napalm_Frank said:
Last 2 Sony conferences wouldn't have been the same if it wasn't a live conference.

You can argue that having a live orchestra play God of War and Crash Bandicoot is a waste of money but damn if it doesn't make them look classy.
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What's that bullshit worth, though?
 
thelastcrusader said:
Companies must be dying to get rid of these. They spend fortunes on these dumb conferences.
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Fortunes will still be spent, just diverted to more efficient modes of return in the marketing machine. But yes, it's unlikely the replacement will not be quite as financially comparable to the annualized resource minefield for planning and preparing an E3 conference.
 
He's right.

Today, a 140 character tweet has a larger reach than a trade show press conference that costs $3million to put together, requires 24 people to fly half way across the world, permits, security detail, scheduling, and dozens of other high-cost, low-return requirements. Heavy weights in the industry have shunted trade show press conferences because they don't need them. 10, 15, and 20 years ago trade show press conferences made sense because it was too expensive and difficult to get coverage for a lesser known game, so studios would band together to "show everything" to a collection of press corps all at once. For the press, it made sense because flying your journalists to a game studio to see one or two games was costly, but putting them up in a hotel for 4 days in Los Angeles to see 300 games being released in the next 6 months was cost effective... They'd get 6 months worth of magazine or website content in 4 days, covering the entire industry.

There's no need for this anymore. Developers and publishers go straight to their fans with announcements. Rockstar has been doing this for years, since around 2007 at least, where the first reveal of GTAIV was done on their website, promoted via an email. With GTAV, they continued this and only expanded on it. Almost all of the promotion for GTAV was done through email, twitter, facebook, and other forms of inhouse marketing. GTAV is the fourth biggest selling game of all time and has made Rockstar billions, while their convention budget was effectively nil.

For the press, flying someone to LA for four nights is expensive and does not have a strong return. Gaming press make as much money on a 60-minute YouTube video reacting to other YouTube videos than they do writing 800 words about a game that they got a hands on with. Developers and publishers are less willing to offer hands on at shows like E3 because they can't control the gameplay. If they're going to offer a hands on, it's like what EA does at EAPlay, which is in a controlled environment that they can ensure only specific parts of the game are revealed to the public. This makes it less cost effective for journalists to go to big press events, where they get crummy coverage of a game that other people are getting better coverage for at home.

Other companies like Valve and Nintendo, two of the biggest names in gaming, have largely abandoned trade show press conferences as well.

Now, it makes a lot more sense to wait a week or a month after the big industry show and reveal your game on your own schedule, without setting up a conference booth, and without taking direct interviews. It allows the publisher or developer to craft the story about their game in their own setting, under their own guidelines, without the need to have to "wow" a crowd or have bad optics of people not paying attention to their title or stream commenters shout "BORING!" in a chat.
 
I don't feel like EA's yearly product line really warrants a big presser anymore. They could do a direct style video and get the same result.
 
Not sure I agree with that. I think the press conferences we've seen this generation for the most part have been excellent, and a great hype builder for the hardcore fans.

Are they absolutely necessary? Of course not. There are far more effective ways to reach mainsteam media outlets these days, and in most cases its easier and cheaper to just go around them entirely with a blog post, tweet or youtube video, that can potentially reach just as many, if not more people - but has a blog post ever drummed up the same level of excitement as a live press conference? Nope.

I'm hoping Nintendo comes to their senses with the NX and starts doing live press conferences again.
 
The Albatross said:
He's right.

Today, a 140 character tweet has a larger reach than a trade show press conference that costs $3million to put together, requires 24 people to fly half way across the world, permits, security detail, scheduling, and dozens of other high-cost, low-value requirements.
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E3 gets guaranteed coverage in all major newspapers and the Beeb here with tentpole games mentioned by name. That is worth spending money for. Conferences don't have the relative impact they used to but there's no need for hyperbole.
 
EA most certainly can't seem to get the formula right even with their stable of interesting games. Hell I had more fun watching whatever Ubisoft put on more so than what EA did. It's just so bland.
 
Wishmaster92 said:
Sony conference this year and last shows how hilariously wrong this statement is.
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Oh? You think so? Is this just because you really enjoyed it? That kind of money can be spent crafting something without and mistakes and leveraging important tastefluencers who can get in front of their audiences that are NOT familiar with an entire brand and make a lot of headway.
 
Also, E3 isn't a singular thing. Marketing works because it has a ton of elements working together at once. E3 is so ingrained in the gaming community and gaming itself that removing it wouldn't help Sony or MS' process. The biggest video game entertainment show isn't about longterm, evergreen marketing. It's about the buildup and the hype, and what follows is dependent on that momentum.

Vince McMahon said:
Oh? You think so? Is this just because you really enjoyed it? That kind of money can be spent crafting something without and mistakes and leveraging important tastefluencers who can get in front of their audiences that are NOT familiar with an entire brand and make a lot of headway.
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I'd say because it was all over my Facebook feed and trending for an entire week. A streamer is going to get you hits, but it's not the big rush that E3 can provide.

E3 already gets in front of people. If you have any form of social media, chances are, you aren't going to miss it. It's on the side of the Facebook feed. It's trending on Twitter. Your friends, if they are remotely interested in gaming, are posting news stories. Even if it's about one or two games, you will see it. You don't need to spend the money elsewhere because the hype does the work.
 
No, Peter, you're just out of touch.

Based on their attempts over the last few years, with their long, boring talking segments, Making Of videos, celebrity appearances, etc., EA have absolutely no clue what makes even a decent press conference these days, let alone a good one.
 
CambriaRising said:
I don't feel like EA's yearly product line really warrants a big presser anymore. They could do a direct style video and get the same result.
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I mean...they didn't show jack all of Mass Effect, but kept on hammering home FIFA and Madden like nobody's business. People at Press Conferences don't want to see what they know is coming, they want to see what they don't know's coming. A new visual shader on an annualized IP doesn't cut it.
 
I think at major conferences he might be right, but that's because everyone will be doing their own. Will have to read the full context of the quote in case that's what he means.

I'll be sad if we ever reach a day where no one has press conferences anymore though. I find them extremely entertaining.
 
Honestly, I would be okay if companies did a Nintendo Treehouse-alike.

I'm sick to death of baked gameplay, CGI trailers and non-announcements.

Give me gameplay and people playing and having fun, that I can just log into a stream and watch.
 
I hope not as I thought Sony absolutely nailed how to do them at the last E3, let the games do most of the talking, and have people talk only if it's absolutely necessary, that way they don't ever feel like they are dragging along and there's almost no awkward bits, something EA's (and Ubi's, though they kinda just own it and go for it, it seems) usually suffer from. Though I suppose you could argue what Sony did wasn't really a press conference and more of a show.
 
WooHooAlex said:
Not sure I agree with that. I think the press conferences we've seen this generation for the most part have been excellent, and a great hype builder for the hardcore fans.
.
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And they've done that by becoming less and less like press conferences and more like a rolling stream of trailers. As soon as anyone in a suit is speaking for more than 90 seconds people get restless. The moment a graph comes up to let us know how many PSPs were sold in Eurasia or how much software they expect to sell in the coming quarter people get restless. The moment Sony or Microsoft takes 5 minutes to talk about their TV endeavors people get restless. But all those things are the reason these retail/trade shows and conferences existed in the first place. If all people want is trailers and footage uninterrupted why does Sony need to book the Nokia theatre or the Galen Center for that? These things are constantly evolving and it's not far fetched to think we won't have traditional conferences and trade shows in a few years. "Because that's how we've always done it!" is never a good reason to be complacent or stagnant despite how averse to change the enthusiast fans can tend to be.
 
TheSpoiler said:
Also, E3 isn't a singular thing. Marketing works because it has a ton of elements working together at once. E3 is so ingrained in the gaming community and gaming itself that removing it wouldn't help Sony or MS' process. The biggest video game entertainment show isn't about longterm, evergreen marketing. It's about the buildup and the hype, and what follows is dependent on that momentum.
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Agreed. You'd think the entire industry would've learnt that lesson in 07/08 with those garbage San Franchisco E3's but EA can't even learn from their mistakes last year, so that's probably expecting way too much from them.
 
Jackpot said:
E3 gets guaranteed coverage in all major newspapers and the Beeb here with tentpole games mentioned by name. That is worth spending money for. Conferences don't have the relative impact they used to but there's no need for hyperbole.
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There's no hyperbole and videogames aren't unique. Industry trade shows are going away almost across the board in all major industries. They hit a height in the 1990s and early/mid 2000s, and since then, consumers and industry journalists don't need tradeshows to see products.

It starts with the big players. Apple and Google don't present their big products at CES because a big tradeshow hurts them. Likewise, Rockstar, Nintendo, Valve, and other heralded gaming brands usually don't present their big products at E3, or GamesCom, or the others, because it hurts them to present there, where they can have their own video reveal at their own time, and control the entire news cycle for a day.

Also, there's very little value for the industry in getting newspaper coverage today. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions for big publishers, on tradeshow appearances just for newspapers to cover a game results in almost no purchases, where as spending virtually nothing on a Twitch livestream or YouTube/Hangout Q&A results in a lot more views and a lot more potential purchases. A single email blast from Rockstar games has a direct reach that is magnitudes larger than the largest newspaper coverage in the country.

Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum here. CES is garbage today because the companies making products you want have a small or non-existent footprint there. Instead of seeing the newest Apple MacBook or Microsoft Surface, instead you see App-controlled lightbulbs and new 3rd party charging adapters, or a new toaster oven that you can control with your Turtle Bay app. Even companies that are small and getting off the ground don't have big presences at tradehows... Tesla is one of the hottest brands bridging consumer electronics, automotive, and home automation devices, and yet, they don't have significant presence at either CES, the Detroit Auto Show, or the National Home Show, the three largest tradeshows in those industries. They don't need it.

I don't think E3 is going away tomorrow or next year or in 5 years, but it's going to follow the trend of all major industry trade shows.
 
Purple Cheeto said:
Apple's press conferences are pretty bad and not bereft of inane garbage.
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Apple's press conferences have been getting less interesting because their products and presentation are very predictable and largely leaked. The haptic feedback mechanisms in iPhone and their trackpads are about as exciting as it gets.

edit: For EA, that's probably Unravel.
 
Vince McMahon said:
What's that bullshit worth, though?
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I feel like that's an incredibly cynical way of looking at this. One thing it definately is worth is positive buzz and I wouldn't underestimate the value of that.

They don't ''need'' to do a conference at PSX that is pretty much a gathering of the very core audience they don't even need to capture. However just reading the impressions of the people attending these events is telling why they have such a loyal fan following.
 
I like the way Blizzard does it with their annual Blizzcon.
Everything from the announcements to the dev panels and community contests makes it a really solid and great event.
 
Other than Ubisoft and the Dragon Quest Square Enix Team, why are people still being coy in answering if they are developing for the NX or not.
 
The Albatross said:
Also, there's very little value for the industry in getting newspaper coverage today. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions for big publishers, on tradeshow appearances just for newspapers to cover a game results in almost no purchases, where as spending virtually nothing on a Twitch livestream or YouTube/Hangout Q&A results in a lot more views and a lot more potential purchases. A single email blast from Rockstar games has a direct reach that is magnitudes larger than the largest newspaper coverage in the country.
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Direct reach doesn't matter for shit if your consumers aren't engaged in the content, nor if they don't respond to that form of delivery. An email blast to a non-GTA person is going to get dumped in the trash, but a game being covered in a newspaper is going to get at least glossed over. And that's not even talking about the internet's journalism at large, which has considerably more viewing power than an email blast.

There's even the simple fact that for an email blast to work, you need a list of emails in the first place. Your game getting thrown up on news sites all across the globe doesn't need that.

Vince McMahon said:
Oh it definitely does, and it is big - the thing is, though, to me at least, why compete (where you stand a chance of losing all your momentum if a competitor does it better, or gets all the press) when you can do your own thing without any competition?

If you're confident in what you have, that's good, but you're also hoping nobody else blows you out of the water with a huge surprise. It's a safer bet, in some ways, to have your own thing.
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A very big part of it is that E3 is established, so having to compete is worth the effort. If Sony decided to back out of E3 next year, it'd be a horrible idea, because now MS has all this wonderful stage time, and they'd lose hard to E3.

For E3 not to exist, the world has to basically forget about it. It's just not worth it unless the brands start making their own side things in the mean time and can power through both while hoping their competitor does the same. And then you gotta get the casual viewership to switch.

It's difficult, and would take years. So they'll ride it out and take the benefit of E3 until it dries up, but it's not going to happen for a good long while.
 
TheSpoiler said:
I'd say because it was all over my Facebook feed and trending for an entire week. A streamer is going to get you hits, but it's not the big rush that E3 can provide.

E3 already gets in front of people. If you have any form of social media, chances are, you aren't going to miss it. It's on the side of the Facebook feed. It's trending on Twitter. Your friends, if they are remotely interested in gaming, are posting news stories. Even if it's about one or two games, you will see it. You don't need to spend the money elsewhere because the hype does the work.
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Oh it definitely does, and it is big - the thing is, though, to me at least, why compete (where you stand a chance of losing all your momentum if a competitor does it better, or gets all the press) when you can do your own thing without any competition?

If you're confident in what you have, that's good, but you're also hoping nobody else blows you out of the water with a huge surprise. It's a safer bet, in some ways, to have your own thing.
 
WiiU0706 said:
Other than Ubisoft and the Dragon Quest Square Enix Team, why are people still being coy in answering if they are developing for the NX or not.
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Could be they don't want to commit to anything yet. So they'll have stuff planned and being worked on, but could pull the plug if they feel they aren't worth it.
 
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