E3 Does it Still Work? Or Is It A lot Of Corporate BS Now?
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Well since E3 2007 is almost over let’s review if the changes worked this year or not. As I was not in attendance this year I have to go by reports from the people that did attend. E3 is now smaller more intimate event focused on targeted, personalized meetings and activities. That makes for less Press for small publishers, due to the fact that the “Big Boy’s†have the cash to put on large press events. No “John Q. Public†in attendance. That drops it from around 60,000 last year to about 5,000 attendants.
That’s great if you’re the press since it was hard to put your hands on the games you need to cover, but bad since it takes the game out of the hands of the people that would be buying it. Some times word of mouth has always made the largest buzz. With blogging so “Hot†now days, that’s a lot of buzz you can only read from press report. ESA is hoping to appeal to the general gaming consumer later this fall with the E for All 2007. An event that will be open to the public, it is scheduled for Oct. 18-21 at E3’s former home, the
The thing is that the major publishers can afford to hang on if a slump happens at E3. They’ll be perfectly content to fly out several hundred members of the press down to a city of their choice, to view their conference. The smaller companies can’t do this and will lose out. These are the companies that, while the costs of E3 were a significant burden to them, they still gained overall because of the mass concentration of media and the public that attended an event they could never hope to stage by themselves. Only about 30 of the largest video game software and hardware companies are attending, down from the hundreds that packed the event in previous years.
The large press events did have “some†good news mixed in with the hype, but over all no “Real†big news (I thought) was made this year. All the games covered by the “main stream†press had been talked about and most of the game information had already been released, all but maybe the release date. I was really disappointed in the quality of the releases / news this year compared to years past.
I think the importance of E3 was made DUE to its Mind-Blowing nature not because of it. E3 did need to change for a long time. I just don’t think that having about only 30 of the largest game company’s in attendance was the change that was needed. I am not a LARGE “Main Stream†gaming press site and I do this for the love of games because TRUST me it doesn’t make enough to even cover the hosting. I will be attending next year (crossing finger’s) and give it chance to regain some of what it once was and still could be. If it does not work because it’s more intimate event focused on targeted, personalized meetings and activities (with larger named press sites). E3 was almost a one stop shop and I can’t afford to go to more than 1 convention in a year.
I think we have all lost something due to the change at E3. The small Blog’s can’t get the limited time with the “Big Boy’sâ€, “John Q. Public†will never get the chance to play some of the games that will ever make it to market. The worst of all is small innovative and independent games companies will never get the press time they should and the games will die before they ever see the light of day. We all lose innovation and choice in our games and news.
Tags: blogging, bloging, e3, E3-2007, Featured, General-news-and-Rants, hype, Video-Games
