Soapbox: I Really Miss E3

E3 was like a second Christmas for my friends and me for many years. We would all meet up at my place for those Sunday and Monday conferences, eat a ton of junk food, and react to all the stuff as a group. It was so much fun. I still watch the events over Discord with a few friends when I can these days, but it doesn't come close to matching the glory days of E3.

Sony got it's E3....it was 30 minutes.

Microsoft will have 3 hours worth of it's own E3 (between the 90 minute Showcase and the 90 minute Extended Look presentation days later).

While I am platform agnostic (love Series X, PS5, and Switch), Microsoft is winning the communication war right now (whether you like the news coming from Team Green or not).

I feel your pain, Liam.
E3 was like Christmas for gamers and The Grinch stole it away from us.
I really do miss it. 😟

I actually agree these small digital showcases and SOPs don't have the same feel as the stage shows I miss them 😢

@get2sammyb I am well aware; but this is about this week. The loss of E3. Just because the event is gone, doesn't mean we don't miss the spirit of it all - which Sony (and probably Nintendo) seem to lack.

Yeah I do miss it.
Still seems weird how they've disconnected themselves from this and went their own way.

I would occasionally watch Nintendo or even Microsoft shows, just cause they were part of the whole thing. Now I never do. They'll miss out on potential viewers this way for sure. Even more causal friends used to watch it. It was like the Oscars for gamers, but oh well. Whatever suits these new soulless out of touch corporations nowadays

Never should of opened it to the public, I might be wrong on the cause but E3 seemed to tank after that

@get2sammyb that paragraph shows why the video game scene sucks and the games are broke upon release. For 20 years these companies had no problem putting on awesome shows. Wonder what changed, maybe it’s the talent. When people are passionate about their job, they don’t cry because of “crunch”, they just make amazing complete on release games.

While I do very much miss the excitement of having lots of game reveals in a space of a few days there is no doubt it's demise is for the benefit of the developers. The time and effort that went into producing the vertical slices of polished gameplay for a specific date each year must have been a pain. Now they can reveal stuff whenever it happens to be ready for public showing.

It was the super bowl of game announcements. Felt like it all came down to this week for the chance to see something amazing from all the studios. Sure you can still get some exciting stuff outside of it like last weeks SoP but my brothers and I would get together to at least watch Sony and Microsoft's press conferences. There's a different energy to a live presentation over a collection of trailers. As big Devil May Cry fans I can't describe how pumped my brother and I got when DMC5 was shown for the first time at Microsofts conference a few years ago. Sadly that might be the best and last moment we ever share from E3.

RIP E3

@get2sammyb video game companies used to be in the making money business, not the saving money business

Yeah I miss it a bit.

Although I was often disappointed by the actual conferences, it was fun to have an event dedicated to new game announcements.

@get2sammyb If it's any consolation, I tuned in to this site for specific Sony E3 coverage (when Sony still did it).

I personally loved Nintendo's approach to E3 in recent years: the digital Direct followed by the Treehouse Coverage.

It looks like Microsoft is carrying that torch this year.

Yes; for all intents and purposes, E3 is redundant in the digital world. From a fan's perspective, it was just fun. Much like PAX; it brings gamers together.

@get2sammyb all these companies consolidating and the continuing money sink that is gamepass, screams making money. Oh yeah don’t forget about inflation btw, the dollar 20 years ago was far stronger than it is now.

Nope, not one bit.

I will always lament the loss of community and fellowship but the fact is that there’s just no financial reason whatsoever to hold an event like E3 anymore. And money talks.

What about „wait until e3“ from Phil spencer?
Do Xbox fans now have to wait an additional year for any games?

@get2sammyb But in the last...what...since the dawn of streaming and comment sections in websites it has brought gamers "together".

I mean, the majority of E3 "togetherness" has existed in places like this.

Together in the spiritual sense; not so much the physical. It wasn't until the public started to get into it that it hit more of the physical sense.

I am sure there were places that did Press Conference "parties" to watch the reveals - heck, you see YouTube reaction videos of these kinds of viewing parties.

So yeah, it brought gamers together. I know I reached out more to my gaming friends this time of year to talk about announcements and such.

So, yeah, it was never your standard "convention" to begin with; but it evolved into it - and beyond.

I feel that Nintendo showcases the situation well. With E3 since 2014, Nintendo would have their Direct on the Tuesday at 5pm BST and then follow up with several hours of Treehouse Live.

E3 is gone this year and today we found out that in Nintendo's slot is another Xbox showcase (Xbox Games Showcase Extended), what does this mean? Well it's looking all the more likely that Nintendo are going to be staggering announcements like they did in 2020. While Summer 2022 for Switch is extremely packed such that Nintendo doesn't really need a Direct until September, I will miss the excitement associated with a guaranteed June Nintendo Direct.

E who?

I liked it better in like 07 time when g4 had nonstop coverage and interviews

Let's be honest: for the majority of gamers it was the press conferences that brought the most excitement, not the show floor writeups.

Starting with the State of Play last Thursday we will have had that, WWDC, Summer Games Fest, GW Skulls, The Xbox event, Netflix games event and the most recent Fortnite event. On top of that it is likely Nintendo will drop a Direct in the next week.

I'd call that a pretty packed week for announcements and trailers.

I dont miss it at all

Yh I miss it too. The hairs on the back of my neck standing up at the reveal of Kratos coming out of the dark spot and then hearing the crowd reactions to it in that GoW reboot reveal at E32016 comes to mind

@Yaycandy yeah I loved G4, Xplay and AOTS where great and Olivia Munn was super hot which helped lol. Check out her hot dog trick lol

I’ve grown up on E3 through the generations and the Europe show. Miss them badly, the good old days.
Also everything seemed more honest and up front in those days.

I miss getting together with a couple buddies, crack open a bunch of beers at noon for the Xbox press conference, get drunk and have a good time at the expense of the EA and Ubisoft offerings the sober up of the Sony presser, the main event if you will. RIP E3

Me too
Before I even discovered PushSquare (which was like in 2014 or even a bit earlier) I remember seeing all the conferences in school nights, without sleeping much, just waiting to see a 360p video of the new games releasing!
I would open Gamespot and IGN streams for the 3 days of demos, jumping back and forth to see demos I really wanted to see, and see devs discussing their new game.
I miss those times, but at least we have the Keighley stream (I didn't like him back in the day, but nowadays I'm super thankful for all he does for the games industry).
Bring back E3 😭

Lets all remember E3 2016 together

I was waiting for an article like this. I used to take the days off and lay on my couch and watch all the livestreams. Now all we get are random blog post and mostly unsatisfying State of Plays. Thats where you really have to applaud MS for keeping this tradition some what alive. Because since E3 died the gaming industry has really lost any sense of excitement.

I always had this whimsical idea in my head, of what comicon and e3 would be. I've never went and knowing they might be gone forever, disheartens me a bit, but it's not something i sit and ruminate about. Life goes on, other things take their place, etc.

Me and the wife loved watching e3 together, and we both have watched it since we were kids. I hope I get to watch it in the future with my kids and hope it returns next year

@GamingFan4Lyf
I'll take 30 minutes of footage for games coming within the next year. Microsoft had an excellent 2021 show last June. Guess how many of those games shown have released? One. Forza. Guess how many will release this year? Zero.

But those were some nice 90 minutes.

Thank you, Liam, for writing what so many of us think on a site where it's been popular to say "E3 doesn't matter" ever since people's favorite blue company decided not to play. Well, let's face it, everyone's least favorite CEO, Jim Ryan, decided not to play....

And don't let the hecklers condemn you for talking MS. They've misfired a lot, we can all admit, but their shows are great, and that's what the magic of E3 was, good or bad, all of them revealing their hand at the same time. PS needs XB for competition as much as XB needs PS. Everyone wins from the rivalry.

I disagree that the industry is better without it. Not only is it worse for gamers to have individual news bits spread at random times all year, it's also as you rightly pointed out, all companies had to be on their A-game, they had to present their best in their best way possible, and that competition really pushed them further.

E3 was for gaming what The Academy Awards are for film and the Grammys are for Music. Those are award shows, but they are the annual centerpiece of their industry that gets weeks of pundits talking about their content and artists. E3 was that for gaming, without the awards. Geoff tried to make it a 1:1 comparison with The Game Awards, but it doesn't work. It comes across as a budget streamer wannabe, not a true industry event from the industry, for the industry the way the Oscars, Grammys, and, yes, E3 are. Gaming needs it's "Oscars" not for the awards, which Geoff took too literally and without enough industry support, but for the annual celebration of the industry. E3 did that. TGA and SGF really don't do that. It's one guy's dream with the industry half-heatedly throwing a bone at it. Not going all-in on it as their annual showcase of their industry as E3 was, and as the Oscars and Grammys still are.

The new format, in some ways goes back to the earliest roots of E3 rather than what E3 grew into. It takes gaming away from being a medium and industry to celebrate like film and music, and instead reverts to video games as toys and consumer products to advertise during it's launch cycle for sales. It steps back from sharing the talent and process as a passion and artform to celebrate as an industry with the public, and goes back to thinking of it as SKUs for unit sale metrics on this year's model.

@Shepherd_Tallon Sony's final E3 was incredibly dismal, but I thought all the ones before that were very well received? I mean the last one had the awkward shuffling of the media around the maze of the church set without explanation, the inexplicably terribly recorded Santaolalla by the company that's a pseudo monopoly on studio and live recording...that makes the microphones.... and awkwardly placed Shaun Layden in the commentator booth promoting licensed third party controllers to kill time while the press was being awkwardly shuffled around. That one was pretty bad. But that's also because that was the one Layden pushed for having despite his new shoeboxed title, and Ryan didn't want to do it, so it was a weird tug-of-war of company politics that led to a half-thought out event.

But everything before that cringe-fest was great. And I'd take the cringe-fest any day to the no-Sony that followed.

I agree with the sentiments put forward in the article.

I absolutely loved E3, but acknowledge that it isn't necessary.

As someone who plays 90%+ of their games on PlayStation, it has been a slow death for E3 since Sony withdrew, meaning I wasn't as disappointed as I might have been when it came to an end.

I'll always regret that I was never able to go.

I miss E3 alot. It was like a celebration of the video game industry. It is one of those "you will miss me when I'm gone" moments.

@get2sammyb @Quadalog What changed is the big money isn't made from big game releases with massive hype anymore. The big money is made selling in game currency for a 12 year old game with a fresh coat of paint and selling costumes for 8 year old games for $10 a pop. Why spend $100,000 on a booth and presentation for a big new release, when it'll make $600mil tops, when the cash cards for the game you released 2 generations ago will total over a billion with $0 in advertising?

It all comes back to the whales. When you have a supply of fresh whale milk, you don't need to promote new content outside the cheapest possible marketing.

@GamingFan4Lyf @get2sammyb You mean the 6 remaining months that Sony will also choose to communicate poorly or not at all, going by the past 3 years of history?

I find it interesting that we're assuming there's no industry support for an E3 type event based on the current leadership of PS (the bean counter who ended their participation to begin with) and Nintendo (Furukawa, the bean counter who seemingly cut most of Iwata's communications initiatives) while former PS CEO Jack Tretton was just talking in an interview about it having value and hoping it comes back despite seeing both sides of the issue. I don't think it's fair to assume there's no industry value placed on E3. I think it has more to do with particular leaders, and we're currently in the leadership rut with product/sales/bottom-line focused leaders with a save-every-penny outlook at 2 of the big 3, with the more entertainment oriented-leader, Spencer, still carrying on with the big showcase.

Jim's just a bottom-line guy in every regard. Something we discuss here ad-nauseum. Bottom-line guys don't last forever. Jack, Kaz, Shaun, Andy were entertainers. Considering they work in the entertainment industry, that's easily a plus. Their type will return someday. After Jim burns enough bridges. He's burned like 10 in a month, the road to E3 is being paved at a good pace...

Coming from the same website who recently told us E3 is dead. Different writer, sure, but there is irony here. 🤔

I miss E3 as well. It was the one time of the year where you as a gamer could get really excited for something. All companies had announcements and it was all compiled during a short period of time. One exciting conference after the other, it truly was like a second Christmas as others have described it.

Sure companies don't need E3 to announce their games. But the stakes were higher when you showed up at E3 and had to show stuff that really wowed people. Now the companies can show off anything they want and it doesn't matter if it doesn't generate enough excitement. There's a much lower risk now for not delivering compelling announcements and a higher risk that we, the viewers, will be disappointed.

I don't miss it at all.
*Major overhype weeks in advance.
*10 second logo teasers for games years away.
*Cinematic CGI trailers with no gameplay.
*Overpriced for the publishers for shows. (As opposed to video streaming)
*And Phil Spencer's annoying grin.

E3 hasn't been good since 2015, It became 90 minutes per show of total boredom to the point that I just read the highlights instead.

Nintendo had/has the right idea when they started Nintendo Direct. Bite size game release dates and trailers a few times a year rather than once.

I may sound cynical, but good riddance to E3. In the age and reach of the internet E3 is a relic.

I kinda miss e3 yes.
But then i kinda miss paper media as well.
There are no surprises anymore.
All gaming news is at my fingertips 24/7.
Oh well maybe i am old.

@EVIL-C Nah, the original writer that E3 is dead is in the comments telling us this writer is wrong.

He also likes GaaS and the NFL. Take his opinion with a grain of salt

I miss how fantastic it once was followed by websites sharing interviews with devs in the the week to follow. It felt like there’s was always a ton to talk about. Now, announcements never feel as big.

@Ashkorsair It’s not that the news is always there, it’s that it doesn’t feel as big anymore, ever.

I completely agree, and I'm glad somebody said it as well as you did, Liam. E3 had become a yearly tradition with me and my siblings - we'd make family snacks as a good luck charm, and sit down for a week of hopeful announcements. Now that they're spread out over the year (which is, admittedly, probably for the best as far as the developers are concerned), we're left on pins and needles all year long hoping for middling announcements that may never come. I can't forget the nearly two year deadtime between Nintendo Directs either. Covid is naturally a factor, but as a consumer I can't help but feel worn out and disappointed.

@NEStalgia completely agree, COD, Minecraft, GTA online and Fortnite make up prolly 50% of annual game revenue and that’s being conservative. Push square seems like a hell of a workplace. One writer writes an opinion piece then Sammy craps all over it.

@get2sammyb I love Shaun and always will, but, he also waffles back and forth, contradicting himself rather often. I also think industry insider problems with the ESA as an organization have colored their view on the overall event format.

Still, he never held the big chair. Jack did. And he's still on team E3. I don't think that's an insignificant fact, and I don't think it's accurate to view it as not an ideal format for Sony when a former PS CEO still has an eye for what the show can do, and XB's current CEO still does and puts up the money for it. I know it's "easy" for MS to do that given their deep pockets, but they're not going to empty those deep pockets on things they don't see value in. They can dig deep, but they dig deep to buy market, not to play cash confetti. Spencer sees value in putting money there. Tretton, now from the outside, but with one foot inside, also does. I don't think the door has shut on what E3 as an event can be, with or without ESA, though I don't think Keighley is the right person to do it, or has the clout to really do it in a way that matters. I still say it's down to the specific leadership. Current Sony and Nintendo leadership are very focused on cost-cutting, revenue-maximizing approaches, but they won't be the leaders forever, and the existing approaches may not work forever.

To be extra fair, Sony did 2 E3-like events in 2020, a June E3-week event without E3 that even Nintendo didn't do, and again in September with the formal price and preorders (and we remember how THAT went down, lol) but that was a console launch year and a very different sort of thing. I don't think Sept 2021 or this year's June show really fills the void of the kind of hype they could be building, and used to build with their E3 shows. Even without blowout reveals, the GoW 2018 intro E3, and even the controversial 2018 E3 TLoU2 presentation, the Spidey presentation, the GoT presentation, all E3, generated a mammoth, palpable hype that HFW other recent releases haven't had. SoP just doesn't generate the waves an E3 show does, digital or live, even for Sony which already has all eyeballs on it.

@Quadalog To be fair to Sammy, Layden did agree with him the last time he dumped on E3, so his view is supported by a prominent involved party.... but Shaun does contradict himself a lot, and my spider-sense tells me there's some deep politics there. I'll give nod to Sammy on that front, but, given Tretton and Spencer's positions, Layden's view du jour certainly doesn't represent the whole industry, either.

100% agree with this. I know it's a cliché say but it was the "Christmas for gamers". So glad I got super obsessed with it when I did and got to experience it. G4, Spike TV, etc, it was truly fun, would plan my whole E3 week, watch everyone's conferences, the pre shows, the after shows, what a time! Still hoping they find a way to make a comeback! Respect Keighley, but he has quickly proved that his whole schtick is a symptom of how great E3 was, not the cause. We NEED E3!

I been watching e3 since 1995.and yes i miss it.the hype and excitement was legendary.especially when sony was involved.word up son

E3 was my Super Bowl. My wife is super excited for the Super Bowl every year, unlike me, I saved my excitement for E3. I know it’s kind of a dying brand but I always looked forward to it regardless. There was just always something special about watching it with friends or texting them every time something exciting dropped or every time we wanted to make fun of something. I truly miss it.

@get2sammyb From the perspective of an old developer, quite a bit has changed:

• Online Bandwidth
• Games launching year round rather than mainly for Christmas
• The death of print magazines
• The end of 5 year console cycles
• GDC growing in size and breadth
• Direct X/Direct 3D legitimizing the PC as a platform for the masses

I had a game shown at the last CES before E3 and at the first E3 in 1995. It was great to have a show dedicated to games rather than being in a corner of an electronics convention. E3 was not just for press & retailers at that time, but also for developers. There were conferences held during the week for programmers, artists, designers, as well as marketing.

For quite a few years, it was exciting to get a DVD with videos of the upcoming games as download speeds were impractical. Seeing a new console in person cannot compare to watching the reveal on the Internet. (They actually would let you see and handle the new hardware). With three major platform holders, Nintendo, Sega, and Sony, there was always something to see hardware wise. Print magazines had a long lead-time so holding a show in May (not June) was important for getting the publicity out there before Christmas.

Print magazines are a non-issue and major games began to launch year-round, so the June timeframe became commonplace. Streaming video became practical so no use for DVDs. Companies stopped revealing their consoles at E3 and put them behind closed doors so hardware became less of a draw. E3 eliminated the developer conferences, so that was no longer a draw.

Still, as someone who has attended every single E3 in Los Angeles, I miss it. Coming together with the fans, even in later years, is not the same. And the experience of actually attending E3 with my now adult son who was not born yet when I attended my first was very special.

Quite a bit has changed since E3 began. I don’t know what they could do to truly make it relevant today, but after 25 years of attending, I sure do miss it.

@lacerz Hey, I don’t disagree. Microsoft announces stuff way too early. A great way to build hype; but also a great way to build disappointment.

Hopefully the company learned from this for 2022 and will only show stuff that is ready to “prime time”.

Judging by the extended showcase featuring actual game play, I hope that will mostly be the case.

I’d rather see stuff I can play in the foreseeable future.

Time will tell.

God I miss the excitement more than anything. We knew that we’d be getting at least something. Coming from the standpoint of devs though, it must have been one hell of a deadline. If your game wasn’t perfect by E3 demo time then it was dead in the water.

@nessisonett I remember working three days straight (without going home) to squash a bug that had popped up at the last minute. Once confirmed, I went home, showered, slept, and got up the next morning to head to E3. Crunch had a different meaning back then and no one made me do it. Just didn't want a poor showing.

@nessisonett That's the difference between then and now. Back then your game had to be perfect in time for the E3 demo. Now your game doesn't need to be decent even years after release....

@OmniHawk I’ve honestly not slept properly for about 2 months, got my final Computer Science dissertation due next week 😂

E3 could have totally done much better, it was unfortunately a dying exhibition due to the costs involved and the charges that they were putting forward for slots and stands space. So you can't blame the Devs for pushing forward with their own plans. I do miss the whole week hype though! We just need an organiser to create something where the publishers take control but benefit from the original E3 hype.

@nessisonett Yeah, but after that you will sleep like it is the Friday after E3! I wish you well.

I don't miss a thing.
I always got information about upcoming games from play-asia and I just only care for upcoming kids games.

@NEStalgia A lump of poop, more like it. 🤣😜

There's no need for it anymore. Studios can show all of this online whenever they want.

I'd rather have a showcase/presentation or whatever PR term you'd like to use that'll show games that are a year away instead of having an overproduced extravagant showcase and promise games that are 4+ years away, nowhere near done or simply just concept art thatll just be canceled a year later.

E3 seems like a different era now. The excitement was fun, but the 3-4 year lead time for when the games released was rough. If they released per the original release window. I still love the Fallout 4 model. Here it is, and it is out in 6 months. Give me that all day long.

e3 was great while it lasted , but its format is outdated. either it needs to be revamped or forgotten about. it makes more sense for developers / publishers to do their own events now.

I don't. I prefer to have news staggered and give everyone their time on the sun.

Besides, E3 just breeds overhyping and ends up disappointing and just a ground for "console wars".

I really do miss the scale and spectacle of a big show like E3. I'm very grateful that I managed to go to Tokyo Game Show four years in a row when I lived in Japan. Watching a presentation stream is efficient and economical in the digital age but nothing beats people coming together and enjoying a special moment. Watching a live stream with a popular streamer and other fans making comments helps but is still no substitute for the real thing.

I appreciate what Keighley does for the industry and for organising these shows but I can't warm to him as a personality and really wish there were more people involved in presenting these kind of big events.

@beebs720, yea E3 seems so long ago, a different era, an era that had the Xplay show, crt tv, and then having a 1080p tv was a big deal. While i do not miss E3 much i do miss Xplay a lot.

That 2015 E3 announcement about FO4 was awesome. FO4 was revealed, had a teaser trailer, and a hard release date for November of 2015 five months later in the same year, not in 2-4 years or maybe never like Dead Island 2. I, along with other Fallout fans, happy danced over that news.

The God of War (2018) reveal at E3 2016 and Sweet Tooth's ice cream truck driving out on stage at E3 2010 are memories I'll never forget. Those were such exciting moments.

@KidBoruto Wow, 2018 it was already fading from where it was just a year or two prior. That was the last "full" E3 with everybody there, but it was Sony's train wreck last stand. The spiderman part was good though. We were all hanging out in the nl forums declaring that Nintendo won E3... And they didn't have much, 😆

In a lot of ways E3 started going downhill the year Nintendo did the Muppets. That was the big send-off to traditional e3, but something wasn't right starting then.

I'd still take the shell of 2018 over what we have now, though. Gaming has just gone so corporate. Maybe that's the real problem. E3 started because CES didn't take gaming seriously. Today's gaming companies would feel more at home at CES next to the new microwave ovens and tube amplifiers than E3

If 2018 was r first, you missed so much of the greatest stuff. Some high highs (Sony 2014 Year of Dreams in a stadium), some low lows (Wii Music!) Some WTFs (Reggie and Shaun White and some corpo media lady sharing the stage...) .... And lots of fun stuff between.

I would only ever watch and wait for Xbox and Sony's presentations, but anything else would have been extra cherry on top. However, arguably the biggest loss of having no E3 anymore have to be Konami presentations

With all due respect.
I don’t miss it at all. It’s typical reporters saying it was great but failing to report on the full show floor when it was there. Only reporting on pre E3 conferences and disregarding important info because they were a few minutes before the conference.
Oh yeah I get it was very cool to get all those pointless clickbaits about ‘who is going to win E3’ ‘Who won E3?’ ‘Why did Sony failed to win E3?’ Etc etc. (Jesus I’m so glad the press were forced to stop that crap) pretending it was only about the conference smoke and mirror and ‘pacing’ circus.
plus marathon sleepless nights to keep up were awful.
(Of course nostalgia makes things seem better than they were but it wasn’t that great really. Too much fluff in so little time. It would factually have been better if each publisher had their event spread)

The reality is E3 is a big expensive advert, and with industry slowdown and rising costs It's surplus to requirements. I get the feeling from every publisher wanting to sell up that profit margins for these massive games has shrunk and there are less of them, so they're spending less on the marketing.

Nostalgia is a funny thing. Ill admit I miss E3 and also the London ects which was smaller scale but no less exciting (probably as i could attend)
They both suffered as they opened to the public. When they were trade only, they were a unique space to network and for devs to share and show ideas.
As a commercial way to engage the public, such shows have become outdated and the worst way to showcase your game, and its quite right that they have gone.
Showing games at times when they are ready, engaging intrested players when your team has something relevant to show, and being able attract the attention of the media when its head is not turned by loads of huge aaa titles are just some e of the reasons why its much better the way it is. But the nostallgia is strong, and I feel it too.

Never mind youve still got 90 min of Phils cringefest to sit through,I love the enthusiasm of xbox fans before the shows for it only to come crashing down when its over ,it amuses me.

I don't miss it all. Short online presentations work for me.

I miss the old E3. The last good one I can remember is when Final Fantasy VII Remake was revealled.

E3 has gotten so stale that MS and Sony threw in a lot of filler. Reshowing things to death that the whole show was becoming so stale. And it felt like only Ubisoft was giving us a good show.

It used to feel like a second Christmas and my favourite time of the year. Used to just sit and read all the gaming news while rewatching trailers. But those days are long gone.

I think they just need to focus on giving us a great show when they are ready to. These days the E3 shows feels like they have to just shove stuff in there just for the sake of making an E3. A lot of surprise drops have actually been more exciting now than those past lot of years of E3. So I would rather they all just focus on their own thing on their own time.

I don't It was to focused on Microsoft & to Americanised :-/ The 'ONLY' good thing about it was SONY's PlayStation shows & the rest was just utter cr@p really.

@NEStalgia ... and here's the burning light of nostalgia, remembering only the good and not acknowledging that times have indeed changed and moved on, and thank god they have.

Having worked many an 'E3 crunch' just to produce an unrepresentative pile of dung to please marketing, I can tell you that most dev's will applaud the death of yet another crunch.
I can watch CG trailers in my own home without having to watch execs make fools of themselves before introducing another half baked rushed video of CG. As soon as it became open to the public instead of a hands on business meet, it lost all relevance.
Its the ESA's fault- they presided over it becoming more irrelevant each year without morphing it to suit the times.

Still, your welcome to your opinion, and you obviously care and also write your thoughts well, so I do like to read your replies. I completely disagree many times, but we are human so that's to be expected.

I'm happy at least - its dead and the industry will be much better for it.

Even though it doesn't really make sense for the industry anymore, I can't help but miss all the excitement of E3. I remember when Sony would actually air their E3 press conferences in movie theatres, and went to one a few years ago and had a great time.

@Titntin It's not the first time I've heard of devs hating E3 crunch etc, and I can understand that. And the bitterness at E3 for it. But I'm not sure disliking the work for the production and mismanagement from within the studios that lead to it being so unliked necessarily negates what the event offers, either. The very fact that the event was so well liked and popular proves its merits. If the format did it in wrong ways that were impossible to deliver than expectations should have been changed rather than dropping the event. Transitioning from a massive showcase to "commercials when we feel like it" changes the entire scope of the process. And looking at what game development has morphed into, I'm not sure it's a good thing.

I can't tell you you're wrong for that view point, and I can't tell you that the "E3 crunch" was a good thing, but I also can't say you're not failing to see the forest through the trees. Being in the trench held to task for getting it done isn't going to make you like a thing, and having unlimited time and unlimited money to make whatever your heart desires would be the ideal as a creative, I'm sure. But I'm not sure that makes the end product or the consumer experience better, and I'm actually pretty sure it makes it worse. That process basically leads to every game being Everwild or Dreams. Ultimately E3 wasn't about the time table itself, but that was both a beneficial and unpleasant side effect in various degrees.

While I "get" the behind the scenes, there's a weird split between a lot of people who really loved the events, timing, spectacle, community, and hype of E3, mixed with yourself and other devs that basically have the view of "haha, the work sucked, glad it's gone" - it's like asking Amazon warehouse workers if Amazon's store is good. Customers will praise that they have good products at good prices with good delivery times and the warehouse workers will just say "Amazon sucks, shop at Walmart, hope they die" Delivering a good product isn't as fun as consuming it. But we're not discussing if the key grips liked working on the set, we're asking if people liked the show.

I'm sure your view is a big part of why companies are opting out of it, but there's absolutely no denying something great is lost, even if the workers are happier to not have the work. And your view also isn't universal, we already have one other dev further up the thread in @OmniHawk who highly misses it after attending every LA show.

E3 seems to have a lot of bitterness for some people probably based less on E3 and even ESA and more on the studios employing them and the demands placed on them.

At the end of the day I'm not sure "E3 crunch" will actually stop at the types of publishers that already had it. Ubisoft will present their show "later in the year" and not an E3 show. Will those games be "more ready" without crunch to produce verticle slice, or is it just a time period that better aligns with internal marketing goals for the exact same crunch?

Not sure if anyone’s mentioned this, so here’s this thing I found https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/06/e3-will-return-in-2023-assures-esa-president

I don’t know if Sony would be included considering their track record, but it seems on topic enough

@NEStalgia
Nice of you to acknowledge the crunch and how so many dev's hated it.

But I'm happy its gone as punter too - I haven't been a dev for a decade now. We used to spend the entire year devoid of news apart from the bits you could squeeze from mags, and more recently web sites. People would ask what was happening or being developed, and for the most part, lips were sealed till we reached the summer event.
Then you had the delights of E3 - more news than you could ever comfortably assimilate and more than you could ever absorb. Followed by nothing.

Much as the week of news excited me, it only did so as we got so little throughout the year.
Because we got it all at once, it was easy to miss things you were really interested in.
Smaller teams who couldn't put on the show business nonsense, were lost in a sea of booth babes and marketing stunts.
Journalists who had been trying create a years worth of content out of scraps, suddenly had more news then they could ever hope to write about.

It does not make any sense to me at all to have all news in one week. Its plainly stupid af.
A situation where you get news all year is infinitely better and its allowed smaller teams and indies to get the notice they deserve without being drowned out by EA.

I had very good reasons to hate it as a dev.
I had very good reasons to hope for change as a punter.

Now its dead I hope it stays that way, and companies show stuff when its ready and at times where even the smaller players can get their moment in the spotlight.

Stupid shows, silly marketing gimmicks, sad booth babes and worn out staff are all signs of the fake plastic society I despise and I'm very happy we have less of it.
Of course their are people who like that plastic lifestyle - they are welcome to it.

Don't think we will ever agree on this, but I respect your view, even though I feel very strongly about E3.

@Titntin Booth babes have been gone for a long time.... that was pure cringe in the worst of alpha-nerd ways. And I'm also not a fan of the plastic lifestyle, but I wouldn't really categorize E3 as being an epitome of that. It was gauche, sure, but I would more quickly define every airport and hotel ever made as the pure definition of the plastic lifestyle. I realize that's part of E3, but if it were up to me I'd shut down every airport and melt every airplane for scrap metal. I'd trade E3 for that.

Personally I'd argue the opposite though. Yes, I agree one week of everything may have been too much to process. On the other hand all year of twitter and blog posts is basically like no news at all. It's background noise. I don't even notice it exists. If it's everywhere, it's nowhere. Even as someone daily on Push, NL, and PXB I can safely say I have no idea what's going on in the game world and what products are being presented, and the last time I had a solid handle on it was E3 2019. Maybe the launch showcases during E3 week 2020 without E3. After that, it feels like it's been years without news. Otherwise big games come and go with what feels like a wimper. HFW happened I think? Ok. Someday I'll notice it when it's discounted. Is it out there? Sure, "everywhere", "twitter", but it's just in the background. It's the hum you ignore on the internet. Street Fighter 6 happened. That's big news I noticed. But guess what? It was E3 week news.....

@KidBoruto Ahh, yeah, 2016 was a great show all around. Nintendo was iffy with the all-BotW set....but it was an awesome BotW set Probably the last "really really big" E3. 2017 was pretty decent, 2018 started going downhill, and then here we are.

IMO 2008-2015 was probably the golden age of E3. But I have ti give a special shout to the nightmare of "Giant Enemy Crab" infamy

@KidBoruto The most classic of all!

@NEStalgia while I thank you for your reply, I feel you are definately being less than truthful about how we receive news of coming games. I know full well that you are all over these sites and you cannot claim you have no knowledge of Sonys 'state of plays as you' regularly comment on them!

So to try and claim you were hardly aware of HFW's launch, or that it came and went 'with a wimper' is simply not a credible statement, and would suggest you are very ecconomical with the truth if it helps support whatever point you wish to make.
The simple fact is, anyone who was interested by that game, and indeed GT7, would have been fully aware of it, had a lot more preview media and deep dives available than they woukd have gotten from a generic show, and didnt have to wade through 500 other press releases to get info about it.

The very example you unbeliebably state 'slipped out with a wimper', is in fact a good example of why more bespoke events are far more helpful for people trully seeking information.

If you simply liked the spectacle of E3 and thought it was a one week festival of gaming, just say so. Thats the bit thats really missing, and we would be in agreement. 😁 Stating you 'know so little about games now that e3 is gone' simply doesn't withstand any scrutiny.

@Titntin No, that's the point, I am regularly on these sites, and still generally have little knowledge of SoP. I know they do post it here, but the last one I saw was last Septembers, and the format is so droll I forgot what was in it. Happened in a thread the other day where I downplayed it and Sammy and someone else reminded me they announced Spiderman 2 and Wolverine in there and then I remembered that was in there. I see the tiles come up in the news over time as new information, and like I described it, background hum of the internet, you don't notice it even when you see it.

And I'm not embellishing on how HFW's launch came across. Obviously it was here, and it was talked about, but there's no lasting impression about it. It was there, it launched, it feels like it might have been the indie game du jour, it just came and went. There's no impact, lasting impression that gets cemented in your head like with the big shows. I remember HzD's reveal at E3. I remember GoW and Spidey's reveal at E3. HzD's actual launch was also bland, thogh, but the reveal you remember. HFW...when was it revealed? I don't even remember. I guess the 2020 console launch "E3 but not" showcase? Or did we already know about it? IDK.

You hit the nail on the head to a point in your statement though. With the current format "anyone interested in it was fully aware of it and had available content." That's it, it preaches more to the choir. The E3 presentation hits anyone that's a fan of games, and shows what's there. The new format, if you're not going out of your way actively seeking information on a thing, information on that thing is stuffed in the drawer. The "500 other press releases" is the whole point of an E3 format. It's about seeing the things you didn't know were there, not living and breathing a deep dive on a particular game.

The E3 format remains the format that the marketing reaches me as a consumer more than other formats. It still does. Guaranteed I'll know far more, and be more excited for whatever is coming from Xbox simply because the format they're delivering the message this year will reach me better than Sony's format. It's not about preferring one brand or another, but simply their message, still in the E3 format, reaches me and Sony's (and presumably Nintendo's it looks like) format does not. If Sony were doing the E3 format and MS were not, I think I'd be more strongly leaning into Sony's direction than MS's. Bottom line is, the format reaches me. And I'm sure it reaches others in ways that twitter drip feeds never will.

Could be years of conditioning for E3 at play, but I'm kind of biased now that if I didn't see it on an E3 stage (or a similar event) it's a minor release in my head. I know that's not true of HFW. But in a way even that feels like one of those Disney Direct to Video sequels of major movies like Aladdin 2.

@NEStalgia Astonishing that you are constantly here and typinng responses to pieces you havent even read?
Obviously if you are being willfully ignorant of releases by not even reading the big news stories on sites you visit every day, thats your buisness, but imo you lose the right to moan about events you deleriberatley ignore.
Most people who like games and come to sites like this will be aware of and at least read news of the shows and whats coming.
As for success, Nintendo showed how people didnt need E3 and that other formats can make that connections to its audience they are looking for. Sony have followed suit and it works just fine. The primary format holders in the buisness see the sense of moving on, and the demand for their products continues to be exceptional.

If you genuinely come here every day and absorb nothing, then I genuinely pity you. But I do hope you enjoy the show tommorrow.
Ill also be watching and can guarentee it will be three times too long and will still give almost no gameplay detail.😁 I hope it gives me more reason to use my series x, its the least used games machine ive ever had so far and having only been on for 4 hours of tunic this year, I would like another reason to use it and convinvce my wife it wasn't wasted money. Its decent hardware and it could use some software that shows what its got.

@Titntin There was a story with a cat picture today. Cats invented the internet (with Al Gore's help.) I noticed that one

Again, it's all about impact. The big presentations have impact. You mentioned Nintendo, and that's a great example. When did Nintendo not do E3 before 2020? They had their biggest direct of the year as a scheduled E3 conference time. The Direct format was invented for E3. In Iwata's time they put loads of extra attention into the Directs, especially the E3 one, so it was entertaining as well as advertising. They had the second biggest floor space at the show, and spent 4 days broadcasting 5 hours of live deep dives with their localization staff and developer interviews. That emphasizes the effect of E3, rather than diminishing it. Post-Iwata the Directs are small, boring commercials, reading content off a list, with the same squeaky, irritating announcer used now by Wholesome and Sega from what seems like the same production company, and Sony's feels like the same thing with a different announcer.

Iwata-era E3, with the special presentation Direct and the live coverage was E3 done right. As much or better than the big stage shows. What we have now is blogging and an occasional video that reads the blog do you.

The thing is, E3 is a presentation. It's the companies pitching the concept of the games you didn't know about to you to entice you to be interested. The twitter/blog type coverage only is interesting if you were already interested in the product. Otherwise it's skipped right past. That's the key difference. E3 (or the conferences, directs, whatever) were both entertaining, informative, and presented you with things you didn't know about or didn't know you were interested until they interest you in it. Now, you just follow the things you already liked and mostly filter out the rest. Game Pass/Plus presents you with more chances to engage with things you didn't know about, but it's still an effort that personally I ignore entirely until something else piques my interest and makes me persue it.

Take for example AI: Somnium Files. If that was shown at an E3 event I'd have been ecstatic, preordering it, hyped for it. Instead I was unaware of it beyond that the name existed. It was free on game pass, ok, cool, that game that I know the title exists. Still didn't pique my interest. Not until people told me how great it was did I try it and within the first 15 minutes was totally addicted. E3's format presents information to you when you aren't looking for it, but are looking to be presented information on things you didn't know you wanted to know about. We don't really have a replacement for that. SoP kind of does, in a boring way. It worked for SF6, though, again, the format is so bland and monotone they might as well have announced a 2D indie brawler. If it wasn't "freaking Street Fighter Six!" and was, instead, a new IP, I'd have glossed over that announcement waiting for the next thing of interest.

Format matters. I'm not a marketing guy, but I understand the tenets of it enough to know you're definitely not a marketing guy

As for XSX, the games will come eventually. For me it's my 3rd party console so it's my most used, and PS is the occasionally used one, but both get used. If PS was my 3rd party console, yeah, there wouldn't have been much on the XB for quite a while other than FH5. Shame Elder Scrolls probably won't land until next gen. TES is kind of my holy grail of gaming and one of the few individual games I've ever actually bought hardware specifically to play (albeit, on PC years ago.) If Starfield can live up, Kratos can drop in 2036 for all I care.

@NEStalgia
I certainly cant complain you don't answer!
Your right I'm not a marketing guy, and never had any time for their antics
But I'm a lifer long punter with a ton of non industry friend gamers, I'm not isolated from who is winning mind share.
Other than me, non of my friends ever saw any games at E3 to look out for. The coverage was so exhaustive and with so much information, that unless you were industry you tuned it all out and it was all wasted hot air preaching to the converted.

Those same people will however pick up on an announcement or small showing of a title through the year, cause they don't need to filter it out of all the other millions of announcements or dives.
My own friends is hardly a complete sample, but from everything I can see, condensing all your news into a week never worked for anyone who was not already in the industry, and having other announcements when it hasn't been drowned out has limited success in attracting attention.

GT7 was a great example. For anyone who was interested in that game, the Sony 30 minute deep dive SOP was absolutely fantastic and showed me very thoroughly what the game did and how it did it. If you didnt watch it when it was shown in isolation and awareness was high, you'll never convince me you will have watched in if it was buried under 500 other releases, so it didn't fail to attract you, it would never have attracted you.

You're quite right, format does matter, and for once I'm not the old man clinging on to an outdated and outmoded idea of how to sell a product. Its quite clear that industry leaders like Nintendo and Sony have looked at this and seen that E3 didn't work and direct messaging does, and I concur with them and believe they know a lot more about the subject then both of us - though I'm sure you'll correct me if you do happen to be a qualified business analyst for games (not likely from everything you've written!)

There's no right answer of course, just viewpoints and they are all valid. I think we've probably covered about as much of this as we could manage now and I intend to let it rest there.
I sympathise with those who miss the spectacle of E3, but concur with Ninty and Sony that this format is dead.

Yeah I hope the show tonight brings some Xbox magic. Its all been hot air and mirrors with free games thrown at us to keep us waiting so far, and I have a feeling we will see loads of 3rd party multi's with 'day one on game pass' instead of anything genuinely interesting. Like you I'd die for Elder scrolls 6, but that for ever away. Its just taken me 380+ hours to plat Elden Ring, which was just after 230 hours to plat HLFW. I need a rest from big games before Elder scrolls 6, so I'm kinda glad theres no hope of that any time soon
Thanks for the discourse!

@Titntin You describe the very opposite of how it works for me. For me, a news bit somewhere on a random Tuesday in Feburary is non-existent, a minor blip, barely worth noticing. A week where I'm focused on the list of announcements, I see every single entry presented as an item to focus on (or dismiss if it's not for me, either way, I notice its presence, and have a mental note of what was noteworthy that year.)

Ultimately what we're probably describing is different people that process information differently. And both types of info-processors are probably large groups. Kind of like the trophy hunters vs the people that cant even conceive of why they exist. We'll never see eye to eye, because we process information, lists, etc, in entirely different ways. Clearly there's one group that processes the blog/twitter format more cleanly, and another group that processes the large session-based, scheduled information more cleanly, which really only means that to reach the full market, both groups need both types of information distribution to be reached. And that's the marketeer's jobs.

Similarly GT7 is a great example. Without a big unveiling, in my head, it's a minor side-release and not a "big PS game." I skipped the deep dive because I barely noticed it was present, and wasn't really hyped on the game. Granted it was somewhat on my radar because of the '00 reveal during NotE3, but the format is just...ugh. OTOH, if MS's show has a big Motorsport 8 attention-getter, I'll probably follow up on a deep dive for it. To be fair, I'm not a big racing simulator fan, so my interest may be different for another game, but even taking a series I'm more vested in, say, Xenoblade, that's a series I'd be falling out of my seat seeing in a big E3 reveal, a game that could make it a "Nintendo won E3" year, instead we got a twitter drop "oh this is landing in September" and my processing of it is "oh, ok, cool spinoff, someday I'll look into that." If that were an E3 drop it would be preordered already. I used to actually preorder everything that interested me after the E3 presentations. And keep lists. (I'm not a trophy hunter. I don't understand why they exist. I maintained spreadsheets post E3.....I don't know what to make of my flavor of OCD. )

It really comes down to how people process information. I think Nintendo and Sony are looking at a core demographic, and that demographic is likely school-aged, and looking at the fact that even their news comes from social media, and is rolling with it. That's certainly budget friendly marketing, compared to big shows.

But it does miss a lot of people. I spend less FAR less into the industry without E3. That encouraged me to get hyped for a lot of stuff I didn't know about, and buy a lot of stuff at launch. Now the slow drip feels lazy, and my purchasing habits follow in lazy fashion. I'm not hyped, I'm vaguely aware of it, I buy it a year or 3 later when I see it on sales. I'm sure they're happy with the market they're targeting. I"m sure the cost-benefit works for them. But I can tell them with absolute certainty they've lost hundreds a year from me alone. Not because I'm actively boycotting or anything but because I'm simply that much less engaged. My attention then wanders to other things to spend on.

Basically it makes keeping up require more effort. Rather than a fun event, it becomes a chore. The E3 format, you'd get one week to focus. Youd get sites like this with lists and tons of information. With the drip feed you need to search and comb the internet for all the scraps of information, and the information that keeps changing, in many places. Unless you're engaged with following each company's socials every day of the calendar year, you're missing most of it. And scraps that appear here, just seem like side-mentions, not big announcements.

But, then, I'm sure the new format appeals to the mainstream gamer of today that somehow thinks logging into a game for the dailies is fun. I can't stand the very thought of "dailies" in any game, for any reason, absolutely ever. I wanted to throw ACNH through a wall for "dailies" that weren't even online-service required. Nothing could be less fun than that to me. Games shouldn't be daily work. Finding game marketing shouldn't be work.

Maybe there's no right answers, maybe their answer works for them, but it absolutely has cost a lot of engagement and spend on my part. Their new way of disseminating information just isn't working for me, and doubtfully ever will. Meanwhile MS is going to offer the format that clicks with me on Sunday. Assuuming they have anything of value on offer....guess where my money will probably end up going? They're offering their info in the format that works with my brain, so they win the prize, not due to some kind of activist spending, but just by pure default/attention grabbing. I've otherwise reverted to my 90's method of game buying. Look at the shelf/digital store, see what's marked down, read the back of the box/description, see if it looks cool. Not much hype, zero fomo, just SKUs to pick from years after everyone else already played it. 10 years ago I could list off 20 games I'm hyped for over the subsequent 5 years. Today? I could maybe name one. Am I less interested in games? No. But the lack of the event just doesn't pull my engagement. Otherwise I'll see them after they're out for a while. Mostly it makes me less likely to engage with new IP, like the rest of the market. I'm sure I'll be in line for Assassin's Creed 28 because I know the brand and haven't paid attention to twitter drops of new IPs. If it were presented it as part of an entertaining presentation with impact? I might have followed it. I preordered Detroit: Become Human during the show and it was my most hyped game of that year. I should be thankful there's no E3 to encourage me to do that....that was such a waste.... But if it weren't E3? I doubt I'd have noticed it existed or cared enough to pay attention to it. I'd see it as another b-side series not worth paying much attention to. In hindsight that would have been for the better though.

Yeah, MS doesn't have much near-future to offer, so "day 1" is kind of the big near term hope, but I'm hoping for some dates, or more details on some of the things we've only seen CGI for, and maybe a surprise or two so it's not a vacant calendar. Heck, Sony's show was nearly all 3rd party (and billed as such), and the main thing anyone got out of that show was multiplat SF6 and RE. MS knows they're coming up short with the delays, so I'm hoping they're putting some extra sauce on the presentation to boost morale.

If they want to both win and lose NotE3 at the same time, they'll announce Elden Ring for GP