You're going to be hearing it all week now. From
game companies to
journalitst to
fanboys, it seems that everyone has the same opinion after this year's expo:
E3 is dead (or at least, not as good as it used to be).
Joystiq is in the same boat. They were severely disappointed with what E3 has become and would be surprised if the expo even survives another year.
(go to source for full article)
With the show back in L.A. this year, attendees were hoping to recapture some of that old E3 glory, but it was not to be. If anything, this year's show was worse than Santa Monica. Not only was it poorly planned and poorly executed, but holding it in the LACC was a cruel, if unintentional joke. E3 veterans who recalled the glory days when the massive confines of South Hall and West Hall were filled to the brim with towering game exhibits stared blankly at the locked doors of those once-bustling rooms. This year's show floor, such as it was, amounted to four rows of small booths in a drab room off the Convention Center's main hallway. Compared to E3's better times, it was the equivalent of holding the show in a closet. One major industry figure I spoke to quipped that the Into the Pixel game art exhibit had more square footage devoted to it than the show floor. At one point in mid-show I stood next to a former high level game company exec who waved his hand at the nearly vacant lobby outside West Hall and summed up his feelings in a single word: "Appalling." Ubisoft North America president Laurent Detoc, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "E3 this year is terrible. The world used to come to E3. Now it's like a pipe-fitters show in the basement."
I can't disagree.
And then there was the embarrassment of having only 50 people show up for Gov. Rick Perry's keynote. Or less than a hundred for the ESA CEO's state-of-the-industry speech. And, without the big E3 buzz, the national media stayed away in droves. It didn't help that there were no major announcements or surprises to speak of at the show. GTA on the DS? Cool. Got any game play footage? No?
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E for All was set up for the sole purpose of pleasing gamers after E3 was made
mediaindustry only. So you Americans still have something, at the least, albeit not as great as E3 was in the old days ...It was actually made industry only, you still had real sales representatives buying at the distribution level, you still had journalists, you still had developers and you still had publishers and their publicists.
What was trimmed out was the "I'm a professional sales associate with gamestop in tumbleweedville and I'm here to beg you for free items and camp demo stations for hours and demand that you show me women in as little clothing as you can"
It was always an industry show, people really should get their statements together.
E3 isn't dead though, it's just drama stirring the pot, if they felt E3 was worthless they wouldn't have been there, they wouldn't have stuck it out in LA for 4 days and reported on the spot constantly. Instead E3 is a jumbled mess because the publishers and developers still can't agree on a venue they like, I mean afterall EA, Ubi and others are all key members in the ESA anyway.
I do believe that E3 never should have been changed at all, that's just my personal belief. But people are being overdramatic about it being "dead" - if anything blame the companies, not E3, for any disappointments, their the ones that choose how and what to present to gamers.
I'd like to see Joystiq and other whining press to sit out the next few years of E3 and see what's really dead - it would probably be their traffic that dies
E3 isn't dead. People are just dead inside. D: