Do Trade Shows Benefit Gamers?

Thanks to The Adrenaline Vault for its article discussing the actual significance of videogame trade shows, now that "e-mail, Internet press releases, cell phones, faxes, personal digital assistants and the like make communication and transmission of information virtually instantaneous among developers and vendors." The piece makes the suggestion, with regard to "trade shows like Comdex, CES and E3", that: "In earlier days, people were attracted to attend the national conventions because of all the novelty present. Now, new software and hardware products seem more evolutionary than revolutionary, with a lot of copycat items that differ from what is already out there just through cosmetic differentiation." Do shows like E3 matter as much as they used to?

Comments

One Reason

[Apreche]

The only reason E3 matters is because it is a set time for when all the video game companies save announcements for. If game companies made announcements as they come it wouldn't nearly be as suspenseful, hyped, etc.

What they do is they make a pile of secret new games and systems and all that jazz. Then when E3 comes around, bang! they show you all at once. You have lots of anticipation prior to the event and lots of talk generated during and after the event.

If the announcements of new games were spread out they wouldn't have as much oomph in their announcement. Of couse this has harms too. Smaller games get lost in the folds of E3. The big companies make such big announcements, and that makes otherwise huge ones from small companies look small.

I'm a CS guy. I'm going to buy the same games no matter what any of these companies do at trade shows or otherwise. So let the marketing guys do whatever they want.

Don't Dis The Messe!

[torpor]

In my industry (musical instruments), we have two pretty important trade shows each year: Frankfurt Musik Messe, and NAMM. Messe is in Germany, NAMM in SoCal (sometimes LA, sometimes OC).

Lately - over the last 4 years or so - I have noticed that these events are less and less important from the perspective of 'promotion/marketing to your market', and more and more important from the perspective of 'have a good time with the industry, party a little'.

What would be ideal is a little bit of Synth-DIY, some Messe, and some WMC all mixed together, though ... no NAMM though, I'm sick of NAMM.