E3 - So, How Did It Go?

With all of the journalists at last week's E3 event home and rested, the post-game analysis is definitely something to take note of. The elbow room at Barker hanger was appreciated, but many folks were frustrated that the hotel and hanger format was hell on shoe leather. Despite that, everyone seemed to appreciate the ability to actually hear and play the games, even if it meant that they couldn't make it around to every single title this year. The only person I saw saying that the event was an unqualified failure was Michael Pachter, the well-known games industry analyst. Calling the event 'a terrible disappointment', Pachter lamented the almost complete lack of coverage from the mainstream press; a result of the removal of the public and consumer-focused elements of the show. For the views of industry heavyweights, Kotaku put the question to Sony's Jack Tretton, Microsoft's Peter Moore, and Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto. Their quote from Tretton summed it up nicely, I think: 'From a personal standpoint I think we need to figure out why we're doing E3.'

Comments

Yeah.

[morari]

From a personal standpoint, they do need to figure that out. It's a waste of time and money for games that already cost too much and take too long to produce. If they really need to put all of their eggs in one basket and announce everything in one fell swoop of wasted efforts, then they could start their own individual conventions... It seems to work well enough for Blizzard and Id.

Re:Yeah.

[morari]

I would tend to disagree. E3's overblown, extravagant approach was not beneficial to gamers. What it often did was push back release dates and as a result possibly allow games to be marketed before they're actually ready. Many companies put incredibly ridiculous amounts of effort and money into splitting teams up in order to produce playable demos and viewable trailers which are all completely separate from the game actually being worked on. Besides, a lot of the hype in conventions past were regulated to a few already high profile games. Because of this there was rarely any buzz for games that didn't already have it and even in those cases you'd be more likely to find a photo journal of the so-called booth babes than you would any information outside the typical press kit BS. At least with the new format that E3 has taken on, the press kits are easily passed out and games seem to be presented a little more equally in terms of coverage now. Lots of time and effort is still wasted on putting together demos to "wow" the media for a few days instead of just finishing the damn game though.