from Hacker News

E3 Is Officially Dead

by eXpl0it3r on 12/12/23, 2:45 PM with 210 comments

  • by sylens on 12/12/23, 3:56 PM

    It's sad, but E3 is really a relic of a bygone era. In the 90s or early 2000s, you almost never saw media from unreleased games. The best you could hope for was a few screenshots in a magazine (and later a website) to tide you over, surrounded by illustrative writing by games journalists. E3 was there to inform retailers of what products were coming, motivate them to dedicate shelf space to sell them, and lastly to provide a concentrated pile of news for the mainstream media to disseminate. This is why for so long the keynotes/showcases were called "press conferences". You can even find some recorded videos from these older E3's where Nintendo and Sony are presenting pie charts and graphs in a fairly monotone cadence.

    Today, with the ubiquity of Youtube, Twitch, and other ways of seeing game footage and content, E3 just became another marketing event. And it was an expensive one at that. Publishers and platform holders chafed at the fact that they would have to do a live stage show where gaffes and demo disasters could occur, and marketing departments hated the fact that all of their effort could be easily overshadowed by another company's big reveal. You saw Sony tap out even before the pandemic hit, opting for its own separate showcases where they could control the message and dominate the news cycle. That became the model that more and more companies decided to pursue.

    I will miss it because it was a fun event in the middle of May (and later June) that gave you a nice preview of what cool stuff was coming later in the year. There are also some legendary moments from the live presentations over the year, ranging from Sony getting on stage and only stating the price of the Playstation (which could undercut Sega's Saturn by $100, after Sega had decided to rush it for a surprise launch that day) to J Allard introducing the world to the new paradigm of centralized online gaming in 2005.

  • by zogrodea on 12/12/23, 4:59 PM

    Is gaming big among tech people and software engineers?

    I did (while 18 and younger) play video games for most days of my life, with it being the main thing I did on holidays and also after school on school days, but I kind of lost interest for the most part after I turned 19 (not looking down on others who play them at all).

    I remember my university (for tech fields like CS) had a room for LAN parties and also had a Discord (mostly a gaming-related chat platform?) set up by one lecturer for informal chat.

    I'm not entirely sure what relationship our industry (most here are coders in some capacity?) has with gaming and would like to see others' thoughts.

  • by davexunit on 12/12/23, 4:28 PM

    The Video Game History Foundation uploaded an archive of E3 2000 show floor footage last week. It's quite the time capsule. The cleverly deceptive MGS2 trailer is in it! Also many things "best left in 2000".

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SekM6yD26Qc

  • by virogenesis on 12/12/23, 3:30 PM

  • by ryandrake on 12/12/23, 4:46 PM

    Sad news. I fondly, but vaguely, remember road tripping from Pennsylvania to Atlanta in 1997 with a bunch of university buddies and other Doom/Quake addicts we connected with online. Someone in the group knew someone who knew someone and somehow we all found ourselves with "press" badges. If I recall correctly, that gave us access to some shit not available to the general public. I don't know, it was almost 30 years ago. 3DFX and Tomb Raider were everywhere. Fun times in a simpler less-immediately connected world.

  • by endisneigh on 12/12/23, 4:12 PM

    Makes sense - the gaming industry, like Hollywood, has gone full monetization. A lot of the stuff is generic.

    Why attend? Many AAA games are basically just rehashes.

  • by nsxwolf on 12/12/23, 4:34 PM

    2005 was the year I noticed it was becoming irrelevant. I had traveled thousands of miles to stand in line to be the first to see new games, and while standing in those lines, friends back home would text me talking about the trailer they just watched on the internet.

  • by timdiggerm on 12/12/23, 3:39 PM

    > A mix of new competitors, partner withdrawals, changing audience habits and pandemic-era disruptions led to E3’s collapse, ending years of attempts to resuscitate the event, which began in 1995.

    This poorly worded sentence can easily be read to state that the years of attempts to resuscitate E3 began in 1995.

  • by CM30 on 12/12/23, 6:57 PM

    At the end of the day, the big thing that killed it was that companies realised they didn't need a massive event in the middle of summer to advertise their games, and could run their own events year around. Stuff like Nintendo Directs, State of Plays and Xbox Game Showcases can be held at fairly short notice, are much cheaper than hiring out part of a hall and have less that can go wrong than a stage presentation would.

    When the only news sources are magazines and physical media and the internet isn't as big of a deal, something like E3 makes sense. In the modern era of YouTube and Twitch and livestreams? Not so much.

    Pre Covid the whole networking and meeting other developers and publishers aspect kept it going, but once everyone was locked in and events were cancelled, well it was basically just a more expensive Direct or something.

    So sadly, it's no surprise it's finally died off.

  • by ethbr1 on 12/12/23, 3:41 PM

    RIP, booth dudes and booth babes.

    Official end of the 90s era.

  • by DonHopkins on 12/12/23, 3:46 PM

    >The pandemic further exacerbated E3’s woes, as quarantines forced several game publishers to adopt the online news conference format, to varying degrees of success.

    Jensen Huang's spectacular spatula collection has driven the barnstorming success of Nvidia's online news conferences.

    https://twitter.com/NVIDIAGeForce/status/1304088143805607936

  • by boogieknite on 12/12/23, 4:47 PM

    Very stupid, funny video from the last minutes of the last E3 in 2019 where this character Bugs Bunnys around trying to squeeze as much fun as possible out of the place while everyone's breaking down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsH0s2_S_Ck

  • by kaon123 on 12/12/23, 4:24 PM

    On the positive side, Gamescom has been on the rise for a while, together with other more local gaming events. It shows how the focus of a live event changed from bringing news, to providing entertainment to hundreds of thousands of cosplayers and fans. With maybe some "news" on the side, which then becomes available on Youtube 5 minutes after.

  • by danielvaughn on 12/12/23, 3:42 PM

    I always enjoyed watching videos of crowd reactions to trailers. It's a bummer we won't get those anymore, but I can see why it's too expensive to host an IRL event. I wonder why they didn't transition to an online-only expo? I'd watch that.

  • by gertlex on 12/12/23, 4:13 PM

    I remember circa 2005 that E3 seemed to be on its last legs? Maybe it paused for a couple years. Particularly, in English class, there was some prompt (possibly involving time travel) where my answer was "It would be cool to go to E3 in 2020" or something like that, and the student teacher dude thought it was a cool idea and explained E3 to the class...

    I haven't paid any attention to E3 since then, though! (I also just never tried to keep up with playing the latest games, either.)

  • by TheCaptain4815 on 12/12/23, 5:02 PM

    I'd love to see E3 in the future be a more community driven event with a focus on A/AA games. People still want to see and attend these events, and there's tons and tons of good games that get released every year that go unnoticed.

  • by Tiktaalik on 12/12/23, 5:19 PM

    Sad to see. At its peak the dueling press conferences was enormously exciting and made for a week of high energy, "must see tv" type energy where you had to be there online in the moment to really experience it in the best way.

    The era of "Megaton" announcements is long over at this point. Still there is the potential to be surprised by an announcement, but it'll be in some pre-recorded direct video with less instant response from journalists* or the competition.

    * I mean sadly hand in hand with the death of E3 game journalism has been dying out for years and years too as print media died and the industry died.

  • by thrillgore on 12/12/23, 5:22 PM

    It took a few years, but COVID has claimed its biggest victim yet.

    In the era of livestreams and corporate events, it had nowhere to go. ReedPop and the ESA could have tried numerous times to get consumer engagement up, by maybe offering demos of what was on the showfloor. But that never happened.

    Hopefully smaller events like Gamescom, Paris Games Week, Siegecon, etc take time to look at where E3 failed, and aim to improve engagement with the consumer base. Of which to me, at least, feels a bit aimless due to the sorry state of games released in Generation 8.

  • by latentcall on 12/12/23, 5:32 PM

    Very sad. I remember watching coverage of the events when I was a kid on G4 TV (video game TV channel!) and being so excited to see all the new trailers. I would have friends come over and we would eat pizza and watch it all.

    Now everything is instant on YouTube or whatever, but that magical excitement is gone. The sense of community is gone too.

    Seeing the announcement of the Wii and waiting in line at Wal-Mart overnight for the release, cash in pocket.

    Good times. Hope we find that magical excitement again one day.

  • by mushufasa on 12/12/23, 7:44 PM

    We're in an industry with tons of trade conferences and sponsorships drive a lot of ROI. For us the value of the conference is really a marketplace; a place to meet customers and a place for customers to meet vendors (b2b).

    I guess big conferences for consumer business make less sense; conferences-as-PR. It's not like Sony sales are going to be meaningful by meeting people directly at the conference.

  • by PedroBatista on 12/12/23, 5:38 PM

    Great in the "golden age" of gaming aka the 90s or early 2000s ( debatable but not much :) )

    A lot of great things and also sins were committed, but realistically by the mid-00's the World wasn't the same and the Internet as a medium of news and promotion took over ( for the better and for the worse )

    E3 should have ended in ~2010, so.. good riddance. ( in a friendly way )

  • by impulser_ on 12/12/23, 6:41 PM

    No surprise. The big platforms, Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo, have a lot of studios under them now that they all have decided it was better just to do their own yearly show.

    And now there are quite a bit of similar showcases for indie and PC games that it probably not worth spending the time and money making a big show like E3 was.

  • by shantnutiwari on 12/12/23, 6:38 PM

    Do people really go to video game shows? I mean, seriously.

    I can understand conferences for books/tv shows, as you can discuss the story etc with other people, ask the writers about next books/shows etc.

    does gaming lend itself to that? I wouldn't think so. But I am an old fart in my 40s so :shrug:

  • by NanoYohaneTSU on 12/12/23, 6:30 PM

    Good. VGA should also die ASAP and will eventually.

    The Audience stays the same, but the Show changed. E3 was a trade show for developers, actual journalists, and the gamurz. Journalists decided to make politics fashionable for the world of gaming and so it did.

    E3 banned Booth Babes when their core audience was males. E3 tightened up on what was going on behind the doors with the groupies. Technology and games stopped being revolutionary or edge and now it's safe. No more actual gaming icons, we need celebrities and influencers.

    This is the result of the mainstream industry adapting to SafeGaming only. SafeGaming isn't appealing to enthusiasts, just AAA gamers who continue to get taken for a ride.

    VGA is going to die when their politics decide to change, leaving their current audience behind. Always happens.

  • by glanzwulf on 12/12/23, 3:42 PM

    RIP. An important part of the gaming history is now gone, such a shame.

  • by phendrenad2 on 12/13/23, 1:27 PM

    I think app stores killed E3. There's no need to build hype around your game, just pay Nintendo or Sony to feature it on the home screen - people will buy it.

  • by tjpnz on 12/12/23, 3:53 PM

    Perhaps their audience of gamers wanted it to be about games? Certainly not influencers, "high profile celebrity activations" and other assorted bullshit.

  • by tivert on 12/12/23, 3:36 PM

  • by theNewMicrosoft on 12/12/23, 5:35 PM

    Well, at least we still have Tokyo Game Show.

  • by didntknowya on 12/13/23, 2:11 AM

    it's hard for new gamers to get into a new game when developers are following the marvel universe concept where everything needs to have a backstory and you need to watch prequels/sequels to fully enjoy things. ultimately they are pandering only to their die-hard fans who will churn with time

  • by gtirloni on 12/12/23, 3:44 PM

    CES next?

  • by Cypher on 12/12/23, 10:50 PM

    go woke go broke.

  • by underlipton on 12/12/23, 3:45 PM

    Sad. Never got to go.

  • by adamrezich on 12/12/23, 3:40 PM

    again?

  • by Insanity on 12/12/23, 4:02 PM

    Kinda sad for nostalgic reasons, as I haven't actually been excited about E3 in the past 10 years or so.