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Who really killed E3? All the evidence laid bare

Who killed E3?


  • Total voters
    158

Yoboman

Gold Member
Nintendo


Following disaster they invented the pre recorded conference after the E3 2010 Skyward Sword and E3 2008 Wii Music embarassments

Instead of the E3 blow out we started getting trickles of information, highly curated, no crowds.

Obviously saved a bunch of money in the trade off but we will never have a Twilight Princess reveal moment again.

Sony
G3RLnyD.jpeg

Sony copied all of this but took it a step further and then stopped attending E3 altogether

For Sony this seems like little more than cost cutting. They were arguably the blueprint on how to do E3 correctly throughout the PS4 years. We will never get the E3 of dreams again

Konami
Konami is credited with the worst, most embarassing, cringe E3 of all time.



There is an argument to be made that this E3 led to the death of Konami as a AAA gaming company. Did it also lead to the death of E3 14 years later? I'll leave that to gaming scholars to debate

Geoff Keighley
sN4AVc1.jpeg


Follow the money... Geoff Keighley is now richer than the Catholic church. Who has profited more from the death of E3 than Geoff Keighley? It may take a million Doritos to make a Dorito Pope. But only one Dorito Pope to kill E3

Geoff Keighley: "I may have unimaginable riches but I'd trade it all for a little more"

Mr. Caffeine



Who was Mr Caffeine? Did he conspire with Ubisoft to kill E3? What did he have to gain by doing so?

Phil Spencer

Phil Spencer once claimed he isn't giving up on E3
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It is awfully convenient that E3 is now dead?🤔 Coming from the man who claimed to be excited to work with Tango Gameworks befor brutally closing them
vWKfHjK.jpeg

Did Phil Spencer use the influence of Microsoft to secretly close E3 while portraying himself as the hero?
 
Sony stopped because they had nothing to show anymore. Their last press conference didn’t announce any first party projects, just focused on already known stuff.

Someone higher up went: “how much do these E3 demos cost us? Holy shit, let’s stop doing that. “
So that’s why they don’t announce anything years before launch anymore.

E3 was fun for these companies before game development costs spiraled out of control.
 

Dacvak

No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
The final nail in the coffin …

…But this is the real answer.

I’m just glad I got to go three glorious years in a row before it all ended and I was there for Konami’s awesome MGSV booth.
It’s true. We were always headed towards this outcome, especially after Nintendo popularized its Direct format. But Covid definitely pulled the trigger a few years prematurely.

I’ll definitely miss E3. Some of the best times of my life, both attending the event, and enjoying it from home with friends. I’ll never forget meeting Miyamoto.
 

Matsuchezz

Member
Nintendo had terrible shows, one after the other, Miyamoto appearances with his translator were fucking embarrassing, I used to look away, I couldn't stand the cringe, also that Cammy woman presentations were godawful and unwatchable, and when they announced that game that a guy was simulating playing drums was fucking hilarious and bad at the same time.
The Konami one was funny as hell. But the quality of the games they were releasing was lackluster.
I wish I had been there at least once.
 
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Fbh

Member
I wouldn't say it was a single thing:
-Nintendo: By being successful with a much cheaper approach of uploading a pre-recorded video, which made everyone reconsider spending millions on a conference.
-Sony: By eventually also ditching E3 leaving only Microsoft, the weakest of the big 3 at that time, to support it
-The constant pursuit of longer games with better graphics: Which made dev times get increasingly longer and meant everyone just had fewer things to show (if at all) every year, which made the event less exciting
-The weakening of gaming media: Which made making an event focused on them no longer seem worth it
-Covid: By basically killing the event 2 years in a row
-ESA: By being incompetent and completely unable to adapt to a changing market
-Konami: By peaking the event with their 2010 conference
 
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Ribi

Member
Y'all finally realizing that a steady drip of shit and indie games all year round isn't build up hype like a banger 30-40min back to back curated stream of games for the future?
 

MrMephistoX

Member
It’s true. We were always headed towards this outcome, especially after Nintendo popularized its Direct format. But Covid definitely pulled the trigger a few years prematurely.

I’ll definitely miss E3. Some of the best times of my life, both attending the event, and enjoying it from home with friends. I’ll never forget meeting Miyamoto.
I didn’t meet him but I did see Kojima getting escorted around and Adam Boyes on an escalator.
 

nkarafo

Member
By trying to make it mainstream.

E3 was never that. It was only for hardcore gamers. It was those who actually attended the show or watched it online. Nobody else knew or care about it. But the later shows became horribly mainstream, with the kinect being the peak. A huge, expensive kid's/casual crowd product commercial no person in the show would care about.

Personally, i stopped caring about it after all those cringe fests like the Wii music thing. After a point, E3 was nothing but a source of cringe memes for me.
 

Sintoid

Member
Costs killed E3
It was too expensive
I've been there in 2006 and I asked myself how can a business company accept to spend money in such an exaggerated show
 

GHound

Gold Member
The industry killed E3. That SGF lineup was already scraping the bottom of the fucking barrel to fill out just one show.

But I voted Konami because Konami is responsible for everything negative that's happened in the universe.
 
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Robb

Gold Member
The streaming format is my guess, mainly for the fact that it’s cheap and can be edited in post.

Why pay a ton of money for a venue, props, live stage presentations with the risk of technical and/or human errors etc. etc. when you can just launch a edited pre-recorded video and reach the same amount of people.
 
Youtube. Why would a company spend thousands of dollars for an event that by the way they have to hold off from announcing something for months until the actual date when they can post it on their YT page, unannounced, get people hyped and talking only about their own product and not the whole event of all the competitors. E3 is pointless. Game awards only works because its giving out awards otherwise they would of been dead too.
 

Allandor

Member
Costs killed it. Just like CeBIT, it got more expensive, so earlier attendees started their own conference (with a video or in the building next to the E3/CeBIT) which was much, much cheaper and had almost the same marketing effect.
 

Pejo

Member
On topic - Nintendo probably killed E3 with the success (and ability to control the presentation) with Directs. After they were successful, any PR director would look at that and say "hell yes, erase the variables, only show them what we want them to see, it's perfect!"

But man did I have fun watching those vids in the OP. The Konami Director's cut had a few things I never even saw until tonight, and I thought I watched every E3 cringe collection video I'd ever come across. I miss E3 so much for these types of things and the hype. It was like the superbowl for gamers, and Summer Game Fest/TGA are not suitable replacements for it. Everything is too controlled these days, there's no option for people to be weird anymore.
 

nush

Member
I've been there in 2006 and I asked myself how can a business company accept to spend money in such an exaggerated show

Plus the cost of other companies sending executives and press there and associated business travel expenses from all over the world.
 

Exede

Member
Good points but whys Gamescom alive and E3 dead? Basicly all points are valid for GC aswell.
 

Wildebeest

Member
When every stinky teenager in the US decided to start a gaming blog so they could get press credentials and attend.
 

Jimmy_liv

Member
The industry killed E3. That SGF lineup was already scraping the bottom of the fucking barrel to fill out just one show.

But I voted Konami because Konami is responsible for everything negative that's happened in the universe.
I thought it was Man City
 

Sintoid

Member
Plus the cost of other companies sending executives and press there and associated business travel expenses from all over the world.
Not to mention thousand of gadgets
I still have ten Piposaru from PlayStation they gave journalists in each welcome bag every time they got in their booth
 
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