• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Who really killed E3? All the evidence laid bare

Who killed E3?


  • Total voters
    158

Diddy X

Member
Internet made it slowly lose relevance year after year and covid was the final blow.
 
Last edited:

SHA

Member
E3 also used to be more inclusive.

images
I hate when Kojima trying to sidestep from Quiet boobs and saying it's not about that, you're missing the point.

What's wrong with these people? why they're so weird about this topic.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
How the fuck is the ESA not the first option
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Publishers saw they can easily throw their games into a livestream and call it a day, reaching millions of people just fine as well. Why pay a gazillion and let dozens of your employees fly in and stay at hotels to build a stand somewhere to show said games to a limited public and then upload it online anyway. This was a good option pre internet 2.0, but now its simply more feasible to announce a livestream. And I always felt many entrees and journalists had no business being there.

For me I don't give a fuck. I was never at E3, and never planned to go there. I liked watching the conferences, and many times good things were announced. Like, watching, and then posting on a messageboard at the same time. That was sort of fun. You always knew it was coming in spring, and something would be announced. But as a viewer I have the same feeling when a PSX show is being streamed. All these journalist brag stories about being there, drinking too much and having hangovers... who cares about this childish shit?
 
Publishers saw they can easily throw their games into a livestream and call it a day, reaching millions of people just fine as well. Why pay a gazillion and let dozens of your employees fly in and stay at hotels to build a stand somewhere to show said games to a limited public and then upload it online anyway. This was a good option pre internet 2.0, but now its simply more feasible to announce a livestream. And I always felt many entrees and journalists had no business being there.

For me I don't give a fuck. I was never at E3, and never planned to go there. I liked watching the conferences, and many times good things were announced. Like, watching, and then posting on a messageboard at the same time. That was sort of fun. You always knew it was coming in spring, and something would be announced. But as a viewer I have the same feeling when a PSX show is being streamed. All these journalist brag stories about being there, drinking too much and having hangovers... who cares about this childish shit?
Excellent post. Agree.
 

SHA

Member
Nintendo


Following disaster they invented the pre recorded conference after the E3 2010 Skyward Sword and E3 2008 Wii Music embarassments

Instead of the E3 blow out we started getting trickles of information, highly curated, no crowds.

Obviously saved a bunch of money in the trade off but we will never have a Twilight Princess reveal moment again.

Sony
G3RLnyD.jpeg

Sony copied all of this but took it a step further and then stopped attending E3 altogether

For Sony this seems like little more than cost cutting. They were arguably the blueprint on how to do E3 correctly throughout the PS4 years. We will never get the E3 of dreams again

Konami
Konami is credited with the worst, most embarassing, cringe E3 of all time.



There is an argument to be made that this E3 led to the death of Konami as a AAA gaming company. Did it also lead to the death of E3 14 years later? I'll leave that to gaming scholars to debate

Geoff Keighley
sN4AVc1.jpeg


Follow the money... Geoff Keighley is now richer than the Catholic church. Who has profited more from the death of E3 than Geoff Keighley? It may take a million Doritos to make a Dorito Pope. But only one Dorito Pope to kill E3

Geoff Keighley: "I may have unimaginable riches but I'd trade it all for a little more"

Mr. Caffeine



Who was Mr Caffeine? Did he conspire with Ubisoft to kill E3? What did he have to gain by doing so?

Phil Spencer

Phil Spencer once claimed he isn't giving up on E3
QGfCkjg.jpeg


It is awfully convenient that E3 is now dead?🤔 Coming from the man who claimed to be excited to work with Tango Gameworks befor brutally closing them
vWKfHjK.jpeg

Did Phil Spencer use the influence of Microsoft to secretly close E3 while portraying himself as the hero?

 
I hate when Kojima trying to sidestep from Quiet boobs and saying it's not about that, you're missing the point.

What's wrong with these people? why they're so weird about this topic.
Because society has made it very uncomfortable for men to recognize and admire beautiful girls. Nowadays booth babes would be so scrutinized and called out as mysogynistic. We are living in clown world where the vocal minority screeches and most others cave to them and their demands as opposed to telling them to piss off.
 

SHA

Member
Because society has made it very uncomfortable for men to recognize and admire beautiful girls. Nowadays booth babes would be so scrutinized and called out as mysogynistic. We are living in clown world where the vocal minority screeches and most others cave to them and their demands as opposed to telling them to piss off.
The truth is they start living and use their heads from 40, I meant no discrimination for these people, it's never too late.
 
Last edited:

Audiophile

Member
I think it would've been best split into two smaller shows with less pressure to hit a singular deadline. Perhaps a spring show to pre-empt summer releases in late March and a summer show to pre-empt the end of year releases in July.

Companies could focus on having a major physical presence at one or the other while having slightly smaller presentations at both. 1 press day, 1 consumer day and 1 presentation day each. They could also have each one at a different end of the country.

"E3 Spring Show" & "E3 Summer Show" or "E3 East" & "E3 West"

Having a single event each year to display your games with a big enough audience meant having to choose between rushing representative gameplay out, making a fake vertical slice that isn't so representative or just dropping a cg trailer or a teaser. Whereas with two possibilities a year, there'd be a bit more leeway. And in cases where said game is coming out in the same year, then each show would be perfectly set to fire off the hype cycle before the common release windows.

It pretty much would've been win-win across the board.
 

Dr. Wilkinson

Gold Member
OP your dates and revisionist history are just really bad. To spend the time going through all your stuff point-by-point would take hours, but suffice to say just don’t bother with topics like this if you can’t be bothered to do the research and come prepared.
 

Dr. Wilkinson

Gold Member
E3 killed E3
Sony completely pulled out, after testing the waters in 2018 and not doing a big press conference. One year later, COVID caused it to be canceled. It never came back. It’s too easy for everyone to do just do their own digital showcases. That’s literally it. It’s not hard
 
Last edited:

midnightAI

Member
Sony completely pulled out, after testing the waters in 2018 and not doing a big press conference. One year later, COVID caused it to be canceled. It never came back. It’s too easy for everyone to do just do their own digital showcases. That’s literally it. It’s not hard
Well as a huge gaming event every year they shouldn't have relied on a single publisher so that's on the E3 organisers. It was also inherently expensive, it is just cheaper for everyone to do their own showcase at their own time. Along with the fact that with all showcases being on over a 2-3 day period many games hype got lost amongst it all which publishers recognised.

Sony was the biggest and sometimes only thing worth watching at E3 but that's not on Sony why it failed even if it was cause and effect, the blame is still on the organisers.
 
Last edited:

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
E3 was for the gamers and the developers
But unless you was having a good E3 it's was like poison to the shit you was selling.
Embarrassing presentations, people actually seeing how crap your product actually was.
And the expectation of actually showing something in a working state.
The death of E3 was the games industry pulling the curtains closed to the public.
And you wonder what's wrong with the industry now.
 

Dr. Wilkinson

Gold Member
Well as a huge gaming event every year they shouldn't have relied on a single publisher so that's on the E3 organisers. It was also inherently expensive, it is just cheaper for everyone to do their own showcase at their own time. Along with the fact that with all showcases being on over a 2-3 day period many games hype got lost amongst it all which publishers recognised.

Sony was the biggest and sometimes only thing worth watching at E3 but that's not on Sony why it failed even if it was cause and effect, the blame is still on the organisers.
Sony was a tentpole as a platform holder. It would be like if Nintendo pulled out. It was a huge blow and absolutely was a primary cause. The reasons why they pulled out doesn’t really matter. It’s just significant that they did, and then COVID one year later. Hence it never came back, because participation wasn’t there.
 

SHA

Member
E3 killed E3
Labeling gamers with bad attributes what killed E3, it's still considered a taboo topic outside of the internet and social media, psychiatrists started talking with Youtubers and literally calling them losers, even if they're multi millionaires.
 
Nintendo, because their Nintendo Direct livestreams made other publishers realize they could just do that instead of spending all that time and money on elaborate E3 showcases that could fuck up in memorable ways
 

Raven117

Member
E3 died, because people evolved. Life is unfair. Nothing stays the same forever. Just accept the format moved to online due to evolution.
This is the actual answer.

Mix in covid (to get things online faster). Mix in that it became less about networking. Mix in the fact that I’m sure companies didnt like being forced to put on a dog and pony show every year (even if they didn’t have much), and yeah…. It’s dead Jim.
 

NecrosaroIII

Ultimate DQ Fan
The industry had been wanting to kill it since at least 2006, they just couldnt figure out an alternative. The writing was on the wall for a long LONG time.

 
Last edited:

CLW

Member
Phil Spencer kills everything he touches.

But seriously when Sony (the only company that did e3 right) quit it was OVER
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Trade shows for video games just aren't needed like they once were. When E3 started publishers and developers needed a forum to expose gaming projects to retailers and traditional media to shore up interest for the holiday sales season. Now publishers and developers can deliver content straight to consumers without needing traditional media coverage at all. And because the majority of game sales are digital and many retailers are trimming shelf space for video games they don't need to court retail as heavily either.
 
Like I said in the other thread, high profile trade shows are dying because it has gotten too expensive. It's much easier to control the narrative and cheaper to stream your own presentation. Covid just gave companies a convenient excuse.

Just look at car shows.
 

lifa-cobex

Member
It died when it stopped being for the average joe and started being for journalists.

People would buy tickets to the conference and try out games for a few days.
Then it became a big song and dance about who could put on the most elaborate show.

I remember watching this and thinking "wtf is going on?"


Nice song and all but could you take you dick out of your own mouth for a moment and get on with the games please.
 
Last edited:

HofT

Banned
It started with Nintendo Direct and then Covid/Sony was the final nail
 
Last edited:
A combination of Covid and Us. Covid caused them to go a different way for a year, and then we showed them that the $ to results ratio was better on that off year than what it ever was at the show.
 
E3 killed E3. They killed the booth babes in the name of wokeness. Then publishers, like Sony, wanted to make it more of a public event when they saw it start declining, but other publishers wanted to keep it a more controlled environment. Can't push bullshit down our throats if the crowd is booing. Eventually Sony pulled out and it continued to die. Now, everybody does there own online thing.
 

Allandor

Member
Good points but whys Gamescom alive and E3 dead? Basicly all points are valid for GC aswell.
Well actually gamescom is only still alive, because it moved to Cologne where it was cheaper. So it already died in one location because of costs.
That's always what kills those things. The organizer-companies get greedy -> convention dead
 

nush

Member
Historically gaming trade shows only existed to show retailers what games were coming for the end of the year and to collect orders for them, this was back when the lead time for a cartridge based games could take at least 6 weeks and the publisher had to pay upfront.

Then these shows just evolved into a marketing dick swinging event and ended when it was no longer an industry only event and they let in the horde of sweaty nerds and Youtubers.

E3 was already dead before it died.
 

Tams

Gold Member
It cost silly money to attend for little reward.

Nintendo were probably the first major player to snub it, but that was more them being the at the forefront of an inevitable trend.
 
Top Bottom