E3 2008: A Disappointment?
Posted on May 3, 2008 - Filed Under Industry News |
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A few years ago we believed the Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, was the biggest event on the planet for gamers. Today, we’re wondering how much longer E3 has before the interest dies out and it becomes a historic conference only to be remembered by older gamers.
In 2006, publishers, developers and media companies were sick of having to spend millions of dollars to compete against each other for the eyes of the press and the acceptance of the consumer. Developers realizes the money wasn’t changing the world or being an affective way to market their games and business interests.
In 2007, E3 became “invite only” which decreased the craze and insanity of the events. Only big press companies got invites and only the top game publishers seemed to put an effort into arriving at the event or asking for booth space. The international trade show was now a small business summit with a limited selection of people and a smaller space for showing off product.
This year it might be a bit lighter still, with big publishers losing total faith in the event. This mean you will probably see no mention of Spore Creatures, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and other MMO style material as NCSoft, Activision/Vivendi and Foundation 9 will be skipping the “trade show.”
If larger publishers and development houses decide to stop going we’ll probably see press passes decline as well. The press goes where the news is announced, no news…no press.
No press? No developers will bother announcing anything and you’ll have a quick downward spiral. Perhaps in a year or two we won’t be talking about E3 at all, news will be shifted to the Game Developers Conference, Tokyo Game Show (TGS), Casual Connect and others.
Before you know it one of these other shows will start picking up steam (as each has in the last year or so) until developers and publishers are spending mega millions to show off their latest products and release their hottest news. Within ten years we could be back in the same situation again, companies spending millions of dollars with little to no effect.
Are we bound to repeat history?
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It’s sad - there’s no spectacle, no way for a game like “Roogoo” to get major press. E3 was never really about the big publishers - it was about the small guy getting his title press; a great example of this is “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.”, a little FPS that would have never gotten any notice without E3.