Gadgetory

- We're less than a couple weeks away from E3 2019. A huge event in gaming. A ton of people are hyped up for it. We're gonna get all kinds of announcements about a lot of big games. And despite all the energy going into it, I find myself asking the question, do we really need E3 anymore? (upbeat music) And this is a thought that even gaming companies have been having. I mean after all him a few years ago EA left E3, although it was to form their own event that happens at the same time. But an even bigger example is that this year's upcoming E3, for the first time ever since the first E3 in 1995, Sony will not be attending. Sony no bologna. Walkman no phony. And the argument that he gives actually lines up a lot with the things I've been thinking about. Now I'm heavily paraphrasing here, but the basic idea is this, is that when E3 was formed back in the 90s, it was a very traditional trade show. Meaning that it was really only trying to do two things. One, be a one-stop-shop for journalists to all see all the big upcoming games and things announced so they can report on it all at the same time. And two, a way for retailers to interface with different gaming companies. So that way whatever Sony can argue to Walmart why you need to carry a Playstation. On the journalism side of things, the Internet has made sharing of information super easy. You don't really need to have one big event everyone goes to to get stuff. There's news cycles happening all the time. And on the retail side of things, well Sony doesn't really need to convince anyone right now to buy their stuff. Playstation's are selling themselves pretty well. So Sony decided to leave E3 this year, and instead focused on creating their own news cycle. Which is why we've been seeing those state of plays they've been experimenting with, where they just announced a couple games and show little demos back-to-back instead of having one big announcement just in June. And this is a concept that isn't unique to Sony at all. I think Nintendo is another really good example of this, because while they are still attending E3 and still give it quite a bit of love, they treat it very much like just another Nintendo Direct, but with just a little extra. Nintendo is already tackling the idea of making news when they want to. Saving announcements for when they wanna line it up just before release, instead of relying on just doing one big conference every year. Instead when E3 comes around they just give a little extra time and focus a little more on some games, and have a cool way of creating an awesome booth to get fans involved and excited to play these games. And that's really the main argument for why E3 I think is still going on right now and has energy behind. The fans. It's transformed into something entirely different, where it's not really a trade show, it's a fan event. Another aspect to that I think gives it a little energy right now is the long-standing competition a lot of these companies have with each other as well. Because unless everyone starts dropping out all at once, as long as some people are still making a big deal out of E3, other companies need to respond at least a little bit. I mean even Sony, who's dropping out this year, is still doing their days of play promotion. Which is always a big way of trying to get people hyped up for this news cycle because hey, look at all this cool PlayStation stuff on sale, look at this limited-edition system. They might not be at E3, but that's not stopping them from paying attention the fact that hey, everyone else is making really big announcements, we need to make sure we say something around the same time so people don't start thinking that we're on the losing side. But even with that energy momentum still going on, it doesn't change the fact that Sony has chosen to step out this year. Possibly permanently. And if that's the case, is that a cue that other companies are going to follow and choose to leave as well? There's a part of me that's saddened by this idea. Because like a lot of other gamers out there, I look forward to E3 every single year. It's that time where we're getting way more trailers than we'll ever see the rest of the year around. And you just watch each of the press conferences wondering how each one's gonna try and outdo the other one. The thing is, the more I've been thinking about all this, the more I'm starting to believe that while I do love all the hype that goes into E3, I can't help but wonder if it's actually causing more problems than benefits. Year after year we have all these press conferences where we get new announcements of games and everyone gets super hype about it, but a lot of times in retrospect, it's not as great as it was when we were first watching it. Either because trailers for games ended up being very misleading. they're misdirecting, it's based on stuff that doesn't actually make it into the final version of the game. It's more of a mock-up than an actual demo. And other times we get game announcements that are announced solely for the sake of getting people excited that it's happening, and no indication of when it's actually happening, if at all. A great example of this, something that people kept clamoring on for years and years was the idea of a Final Fantasy 7 remake. Which Sony did eventually announce, and then not really talk about for four more years until recently when we were getting more info and might actually learn that it's coming out sometime in the relative near future. In the rush for all these companies to try and make the biggest and best presentation possible, we end up with announcements that don't really live up to what actually happens years later. And in a lot of cases dev teams are forced to try and make something work just in time for the show, that isn't necessarily gonna be what the final product is really like. This also pressures companies to try and save all their announcements just in time for this one thing, or force things to be ready just in time for it. As opposed to a model like what Nintendo's doing, or even what Sony is beginning to do with State of Play, where they just do announcements as time goes by, and waits to make sure that all the games they're working on are actually going at a smooth pace, and the updates are reflecting real stuff that's gonna be on its way. Going back to that interview with Sean Layden. This is an idea he brings up as well, talking about the fact that Sony as a game company right now wants to focus on major first party titles and release them when they're finished. They're not trying to meet any kind of specific deadline to show certain gameplay, they're not trying to force things to fit in a specific cycle. But instead just try to build hype as things are being completed. Which honestly is kind of the better situation. It doesn't have the same kind of hype building that E3 gives us, but it leads to better product. There is a lot happening in the game space right now. Whether that's reports of more more companies falling prey to massive crunch that sometimes leads to botched launches at them, or situations where countries are now beginning to ban loot box progression, which is a core part of lots of major game releases. And as part of all these major changes as companies begin to reexamine how they wanna approach game development cycles, I just have to wonder if maybe part of that is it's time for E3 to step out.