Right, it's not that they're not interested in staging a marketing damburst of content and announcements or that the mid-summer timeline no longer works for gaming companies. (I had thought that was going to be an issue with game development pushing much longer than in the past, but the known streaming events from Ubisoft and Microsoft are still right in the same June-week-2 time period that E3 was supposed to happen.) They still want the hype pop of E3, they just want to control it (no live demonstrations, no press hands-on, no competitors in the room next door,) and not pay for it.
Strategically, I get it. E3 is a product of an outdated way of selling product. But as a sign of the health of the industry, saving some bucks to not throw parties is a bad trend. (I'd at least be in favor of E3 dying if there were more events like Blizzcon for fans, but then could SEGA or Ubisoft really have a public event that people would come out for?) And for me as a gamer, I just am struggling so hard to summon any at all fucks for any video streaming event. E3 could get boring (it was usually over before the day it official even started, thanks to all the pre-showcases before opening the show floor,) but at least it was live in the moment and at a given time that I could set aside some enthusiasm.