E3 2007 A More 'Targeted' Event 76
simoniker writes "Following some rampant media speculation over the weekend, the ESA trade organization has released an official statement on the future of the E3 game trade show, revealing that it is not cancelled outright, but is rather 'evolving into a more intimate event focused on targeted, personalized meetings and activities.' E3 2007 will still take place in Los Angeles next year, according to the ESA's Doug Lowenstein, but 'will not feature the large trade show environment of previous years.'" Which is to say, it's not really E3 anymore.
Re:Girls (Score:2)
Re:Girls (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Girls (Score:1)
I'm gonna do my own E3 with blackjack and hookers! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm gonna do my own E3 with blackjack and hooke (Score:1)
E3 is dead, long live E3 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:E3 is dead, long live E3 (Score:2)
Or ride off existing game-oriented events like PAX. I rather like this idea actually, push the games towards the gamers directly, right on their door step.
Re:E3 is dead, long live E3 (Score:3, Interesting)
Press-only (Score:1)
http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=1 [megatokyo.com]
Re:E3 is dead, long live E3 (Score:1)
The "noise" which is the main thing that killed this event was the thousands of fan-boys that didn't belong there. This wasn't supposed to be the "Who Loves Videogames, Come On Down!" event that it became, it was always meant to be private, industry only. When such a huge percentage are not the media, buyers, or developers, basically anyone who can help your business other than buying your stuff retail then you end up having to cast a fairly large net to get the people you want. Your playing to a
Re:E3 is dead, long live E3 (Score:1)
Hang on... (Score:2, Insightful)
What is E3? (Score:4, Informative)
What is E3? Is it just a convention, a convenient vehicle for putting developers in the same room as producers and distributors? Or is it...a spectacle, a chance to throw out some massive hype and drum up interest in upcoming games?
Please, that's not even a question. E3 may have started out as a business-oriented conference, but the name "E3" is now completely associated with booth babes, demos, drool, web comics, vaporware, and Sony press releases of Epic proportions (Forgive the pun...). E3 is dead, this announcement notwithstanding. It's also a clear example of the Theseus paradox, but that's not really relevant.
Goodbye, ridiculously endearing media event. Hello...business thing.
Re:What is E3? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What is E3? (Score:1)
Re:What is E3? (Score:5, Insightful)
The necessity of being a media circus has thrown the cost-benefit equation of E3 way off track. As a business event it was becoming less and less valuable because of the increasingly non-industry attendance, as a media event it was becoming less and less valuable because of the proliferation of other media channels (thanks Internet!), and it was continually getting more expensive. This change is good.
Re:What is E3? (Score:2)
From what I've seen -- yes, the latter, and what's confusing, given this decision -- the game companies seemed to love it for that. I'm not sure the ESA is fully in touch with either their most important gaming fans or most of the game companies themselves.
Re:What is E3? (Score:2)
I'm happy to see this kind of change.
Translation? (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Translation? (Score:2)
Clearly you misunderstand the meaning of the word 'targeted.' What they mean to say is that they'll be playing a FPS on closed 8-person LANs, hence the 'targeted'. Oh, and they'll be using first names, hence the 'personalized'. And, of course, they'll be saying 'hi' to eachother and there will be massive quantities of hand-shaking (the 'meetings').
As for strippers and lap-dances, I think you'
No longer a commercial. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No longer a commercial. (Score:1)
Re:No longer a commercial. (Score:2)
Duke Nukem Forever in 2007! (Score:5, Funny)
So the booth babes are being replaced by hookers?
What do you want to bet... (Score:4, Informative)
E3 has not always been open to the public, either. Only in the past couple years have they started selling general admission tickets, though it was never hard to get a press pass if you had even a moderately popular web site.
I bet the ESA looked at the industry and realized that because of consolidation and an off-year for consoles there are only a few big players left who can afford to support E3, and they're already throwing their own events.
Re:What do you want to bet... (Score:1)
Er... E3 has never been [e3expo.com] open to the public.
Re:What do you want to bet... (Score:3, Informative)
It used to be easy to get into E3, but recently, it has become harder and harder to get in if you weren't part of the industry or press. The only time tickets were up for sale was an eBay auction for a pair of press passes, but that was taken down quickly. Parent seriously has his info mixed up.
Re:What do you want to bet... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What do you want to bet... (Score:2)
If they want to make a greater profi
Re:What do you want to bet... (Score:2)
I think the effects of cancelling E3 (and that's what this is; E3 as the game-buying-public knows it has been cancelled) will be profoundly damaging from a symbolic standpoint. There are already signs of a
spaceworld (Score:3, Interesting)
First Comdex, now E3 (Score:4, Insightful)
The only suspense left is related to unsubstantiated rumors, blurry prototype photos on blogger sites, and actualy press releases by companies.
I remember years ago how exciting the West Coast Computer Fair was -- small vendors trying to show off something special that you would otherwise never see or know about, then I remember Comdex - people coming from all over the world to unveil new products.
Nobody waits for a trade show now to unveil anything - everyone wants a jump on their competition, and consumers don't want to wait for information that they could be reading about in their RSS feed readers every day.
As a result, people feel less and less inclined to go to trade shows when they already know all there is to know about the PS3, the Wii, the Xbox 360's giant external power transformer, the new games, etc.
I remember the excitement of collecting vendor trinkets and carrying HUGE bags of product literature around for days on end. Who's going to do that now? I mean... maybe jot down a few urls in your PDA, but... traveling to collect BAGS of literature? That's so last century.
Re:First Comdex, now E3 (Score:2)
You mean photographed and OCRed in your smartphone... right?
Re:First Comdex, now E3 (Score:1)
Oooh, yeah. I can taste the excitement.
Don't get out much, do ya?
Not to be a gammer nazi.. (Score:1)
You gotta have Faith (Score:2)
Ian Faith might have said their appeal is becoming more selective.
Bleh, E3 (Score:3, Informative)
Of course the perspective of a marketing persion will be the opposite of that of a developer. But I think that marketing departments are half the problem with the industry -- the drive has become one to create guaranteed sellers using big IP licenses and tired old game formats rather than to create excellent products that sell on their own merits.
E3Expo (Score:4, Funny)
Re:E3Expo (Score:1)
Oh where will all the vendors go? (Score:3, Insightful)
In response to the publisher complaints... (Score:3, Insightful)
Strangely, the companies with good games to actually show off, despite having a very small floor presence and minimal budgets somehow get plenty of press attention.
Crysis wasn't that big a booth (nor was Far Cry several years back). Dead Rising consisted of maybe four consoles and no one to talk it up. Half Life 2 was a single small room. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, a couple of years back, was a few GameCubes, some weird controllers and one girl trying to explain it to confused people. Guitar Hero was a relatively small setup too. Every one of those titles gained huge coverage because, shockingly, they relied on simply being good.
EA has about a third of the gaming market sewn up and is very profitable because it has realized the same thing the movie industry has: Make 20% profits on lots of safe investments and you'll be far better off than someone who makes 1000% on one title and has ten others fail. It's a great business model but ultimately means you put out a boring product that no amount of dressing it up is going really excite journalists who're looking for something sensational.
As such, yeah, no amount of spending will get a good return at E3 compared to the small companies that have their one really exciting release. The little companies will never need a big booth and the creme-de-la-creme of LA's strippers to get people's interest. For EA, it makes absolute sense to move to a private demo where you fly journalists in, competing against no one else, and then let the small guys starve in a world with no centralized tradeshow that journalists will be at and they're too small to pay to fly them in for one-on-ones.
For the EA business model of large quantities of predictable over taking risks, E3 was at best a waste of money and at worst a way to help the competition.
Not knocking EA per se. Other large publishers have reached similar conclusions just as the movie industry, music industry and even the book publishing industry have. I just picked EA because they're so much larger than anyone else (largely because of having been smart enough, even if we hate the reality of it, to realize this before most others).
The sad truth is, E3 was great for gamers as it rewarded small companies with great games vastly more than giants with solid but repetetive ones. As the giants have the money, its death was kind of inevitable.
Re:In response to the publisher complaints... (Score:3, Insightful)
People want to know about E3 because it's supposedly a spectacle. Because people want to know about it, the journalists make money by writing about it so they turn up.
Have a small tradeshow that's little more than small private demos and it loses the hype. Lose the hype and you lose the profitability for journalists to attend. At that point they may as well just go to private demos at the company HQ - which the big companies can afford to put on and th
My prediction... (Score:1)
backslash backlash? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Is this dupe a Backslash article, or just the run-of-the-mill kind of dupe? Like, did Zonk read the previous replies and decide that there wasn't enough ad hits, or did Zonk NOT even read the little sidebar that's RIGHT THERE ON THE FRONT PAGE that says "Older Stuff: The End of E3?" and decide to crank out this blurb?
Re:backslash backlash? (Score:3, Informative)
What really happened (Score:2)
Also I imagine Sony pitched a gargantuan fit after they tanked like a Sherman that's thrown its treads.
Video Game "Cannes" (Score:5, Interesting)
Ya, it kinda deviated from its original intention as a trade show, but it became sort of a "Cannes" of videogames.
If you don't know what the Cannes Film Festival is, it's an annual international film festival (obviously) in the city of Cannes, France. The most important film festival in the world. It's filled to the brim with celebrities, and is a favourite venue for famous directors to debut their newest film.
E3, in recent years, started to emulate this festival in certain ways. In a more plasticky, american way, of course.
The internet may be the most efficient way of putting-out press releases, trailers and screenshots, but the games industry NEEDS a flashy annual event. (And I'm certain many of you will be quite vocal in your disagreement with this.)
Re:Video Game "Cannes" (Score:1)
Why?
Re:Video Game "Cannes" (Score:2)
Look at Kentia Hall. There is NO WAY IN HELL those companies would have any way of getting any (relatively) decent amount of notice if they relied on the web. (They have a hard enough time as it is getting noticed.)
The problem is E3 spending got WAY out of control, each c
Re:Video Game "Cannes" (Score:1)
Re:Video Game "Cannes" (Score:2)
Plus, attentive developers can stand around and watch people interact with their games. See what's working and what's not, without having to dredge teens from a mall for focus testing. (A few times I've been playing games at E3, and seen developers keenly watching.)
don't show off without money (Score:1)
Uh, whatever. (Score:2)
layoffs (Score:1)
Good riddance (Score:2)
Pretty much anyone who could pay the admissions reguardless of pre
Comic-Con (Score:2)
The big winner in this will be San Diego Comic-Con. Already, many of the game publishers are exhibiting there, and one of the "big three" console makers as well. (Nintendo) I strongly believe that Comic-Con will attract more as e3 becomes smaller and smaller.
Re:Comic-Con (Score:1)
PAX (Score:2)
More 'Targeted' (Score:2, Funny)
ESA: "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no...no, no, not at all. I just think that its appeal is becoming more selective."
(With apologies to Spinal Tap)
Video Coverage (Score:1)