E3 TO BE CANCELLED?
In the last week or two, there have been a lot of rumblings that many of the main industry players feel that the costs of having an E3 presence have far exceeded the benefit of the event, and were considering scaling back or walking away from the show all together.
Well, news is breaking all over the internet right now that due to the number of exhibitors who have decided to pull out, E3 - at least in it's current form - will be cancelled within the next 48 hours.
If you ask me, while I've got some doubts due to the difficulty of just about any of the companies to break with tradition, I've got to say that canceling the show makes a lot of sense, and I'll tell you why...
Lets look at the facts - E3 is really useless now - it's a dinosaur. The only people who generally get invited, besides people in the industry showing off their products are the media, sales people and celebrities. Let's look at why that's just not going to cut it in the long run;
The Media
It's a lot easier to either hold your own event and not worry about people rushing through your presentation because they want to be somewhere else AND you can control who has access to your presentation. The guy who bashes your products all the time? Don't invite him. (It could close down just what negative things people are willing to say about a product - which would suck) - Imagine how pissed Sony must have been with how despite all the money they spent, E3 basically came off as a huge negative for them.
Further, as Microsoft proved this year, it's a lot easier for them to get information to their users without having to spend the money on an E3 presence. When you stop and think about it, all the news reported on ANY of the major announcements come from the Pre-E3 press conferences, not what's going on on the show floor.
The explosion of web-based news is quickly closing off the bigger magazines and to some extent the larger web portals (why I don't know in that case) because they just can't keep up. Game magazines and sites like Gamespot, IGN and Gamespy used to be where I got my news - now, I've found they're usually the last ones to get a piece of breaking news, and as such I search the Kotaku, Destructoid, EvilAvatar and Joystiqs of the world.
Finally, as far as the media goes, here's a prime example of why the show has grown to be a pointless expense. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition barely received any hype from this years E3 - you heard about it once, maybe twice. For all the money MS and Capcom spent on the show, the game got comparatively NO positive word of mouth or press - yet during E3, a demo of the game was released to the general public via Xbox Live, and people went crazy over it. Virtually overnight the game went from being a fringe title, to being on many people's "must-have" lists. It didn't need any huge parties, a massively expensive booth or a ticket to the media hype-meter. What it needed was a chance to sell itself to the people who Capcom hopes will actually buy it - namely, the public - and when it got that chance, it ran with it.
Sales People
No offense to any who work in sales, but why spend the money to try and impress store employees who have little say over what the stores buy and try to push? Most game store employees don't spend much time talking to their customers besides trying to push a hint guide on them, so why spend money to show them things that they aren't going to pass on?
Celebrities
Maybe they're finally learning that most gamers don't buy into the same crap the entertainment industry does, and the general disrespect the industry gets from celebrities takes it to a level of "why bother?" - There really is NO benefit to the companies throwing these huge parties, because again, I've never heard a single bit of news that interested me coming from one - it's a waste of money for no return.
Hopefully this will move the industry more towards consumer oriented events (PAX, Digital Life, QuakeCon, etc) where you can get the word out to everyone who's interested. My fear here is that what it really will lead to is individual demonstrations for a select few who are guaranteed to favorably view the product.
What do you think about all this? Let us know by posting in the comments section. While you're thinking up something to say, why not check out these other sites carrying this story?
Next-Generation, Kotaku, Major Nelson, Gamerscore Blog, Evil Avatar, Destructoid, Joystiq, Gamespot, IGN
Updated while being posted: Gamespot is reporting that the ESA has announced they will have a comment on the situation tomorrow.
Posted by nylatenite
at 5:40 PM EDT
