After more than two decades of E3, each one bigger than the last, the time has come to say goodbye.
Thanks for the memories.
Probably after all major studios pulled out. Turns out dumping tons of money on huge marketing shows that usually turn out a ton of drama probably isn’t the best spend of money. It’s much cheaper to run your own announcements under your own control. The better game show for fans would be PAX.
Why, again? It seemed like it was still super popular with fans and the public.
E3 was king in the age before widespread social media marketing campaigns. You’d go to those shows to showcase everything to the media to generate hype at one of the biggest events of the year. Those journalists would then go back and write all about it, giving the upcoming projects hype and attention.
Now with social media it’s more effective for brands to run their own campaigns. You can spend millions on an E3 presentation or you can give streamers/YouTubers review copies for free and get a ton of good press.
Once the big companies pulled out it became a lot less attractive to go, then the pandemic seems to have put the final nail in the coffin.
Every year became a competition, and it was unsustainable. Companies could spend millions on their presentation only to “lose” and get their reveals drowned out because Sony announced FF7 or Microsoft got Elder Scrolls etc. On all sides there was a rush to be the winner of the year, and it led to more and more CGI trailers of things 5+ years away just for the big reveal moment. I imagine both Sony and Microsoft would prefer to announce individual games as they come throughout the year, so their reveal is the only big gaming news of the week and everyone is talking about it.
