Publishers need to better understand their audiences before hosting insipid livestreams. While we’re hesitant to criticise companies too hard – after all, we’re not owed semi-regular broadcasts from the likes of Ubisoft, EA, et al – the reality is that these Nintendo Direct-inspired marketing drops are getting worse. It would appear none of these organisations understand their fans at all.
Take the Disney & Marvel Games Showcase from late last week. This promised big updates on upcoming projects from the multimedia juggernaut, and it was eye-opening just how much the firm currently has in the pipeline. But fans tuned in hoping to learn more about the Captain America and Black Panther project being helmed by Uncharted creator Amy Hennig; instead, they left with more questions than they went in with.
It's telling that a new Pokémon Go-style augmented reality title from Niantic closed out the briefing: this will no doubt prove big business for the fat-cats at Marvel, but it’s not the kind of reveal core gamers setting time aside on their Friday evening will want to see. Other major announcements, like a Tron visual novel from Bithell Games, were glossed over so quickly that there was nothing to glean from them.
Some had, understandably, tuned in to the Marvel showcase expecting updates on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Marvel’s Wolverine. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, ultimately, but always seemed unlikely with Sony publishing those games. That said, if that’s where expectations are, then it’s the responsibility of the publisher to fill the time with projects of similar interest and value, otherwise what’s the point in broadcasting to begin with?
To be fair, we fully understand why firms are struggling to find the right balance: the games on display need to be exciting, and there needs to be enough information to whet the appetite, without dawdling and lingering for too long. That ain’t easy! Yet, French publisher Ubisoft committed many of these cardinal sins during its own livestream: it designated several minutes to upcoming pirate sim Skull & Bones, without actually adding anything new to the conversation.
Ubisoft Forward was an oddity overall: weighing in at just under 90-minutes – with a robust pre-show, too – this was a mammoth livestream, with large chunks of the running time feeling like filler before the firm got to the Assassin’s Creed information everyone had tuned in for. Even then, there was a lot of hot air from the likes of host Danny Wallace: we didn’t exactly feel like we came away with a deeper understanding of what to expect from the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Mirage, not to mention Codenames Red and Hexe.
And when you consider that fans will have sat through several minutes of mobile games, including an enormous presentation of Rainbow Six Mobile, you have to question who the livestream is for? Yes, it’s potentially big news for Ubisoft investors that The Division is coming to phones, and we understand the publisher needs to draw attention to everything it’s working on, but these live shows leave a bad taste when it feels they’re stuffed full of filler.
There’s a very simple solution for the critics: just don’t watch them. But that doesn’t really solve the problem, does it? Ultimately, it feels like publishers are struggling to understand their audiences with their scheduled marketing livestreams. While traditional E3 press conferences had their low points, at least you had the pomp and ceremony and subsequent memes to fall back on. There’s none of that here: just minutes and minutes of needless screentime devoted to games that those tuning in are unlikely to ever play.
Sony’s yet to announce a PlayStation Showcase – in fact, the platform holder rarely announces anything at all these days. But we expect the manufacturer to have a better understanding of its audience the next time it does speak. Nintendo, too, seems to have an awareness of what its biggest, most vocal fans want. But the major third-party publishers, the likes of Ubisoft et al, just haven’t figured it out yet.
If anything, these regularly scheduled info drops are getting worse…
What are your thoughts on the state of publisher livestreams from the likes of Ubisoft et al? Do you enjoy these regularly scheduled info drops, or is the content getting worse? What can companies do differently to improve these presentations moving forwards? Sound off in the comments section below.
Comments 53
I watched Ubisofts and afterwards felt like apologizing to sony anout any issues I had with state of play. Everyone just seemed so smug especially Danny Wallace. Honestly the Assassin's Creed part was painful with only cg trailers and 10 second teasers.
They’re attempting to combine products for three different markets into a single live stream. This leaves most of the people bored most of the time. They should’ve probably split it between console/PC , Mobile and TV.
It's the fake friendliness that gets me. The scripted "jokes" and the segments where streamers unashamedly shill for their corporate overlords.
I'm being dramatic but it really is annoying when all you want to see is the new games. Obviously these companies are not your friends and they exist to make money, but I'm sure they could make their shows much more bearable by dropping the sickly sweet presenters and terrible scripts.
I for one miss the E3 style. E3 2015 and 2016 I think were some of the last good ones.
When it was E3 or TGS or Gamescom it was "show what you got, ready or not" but even on their own timetable publishers still cant get it right.
Nintendo still aces them, sony is getting better but they lack charm, anyone else just sucks at it.
After all these years and many trying to, Nintendo is still the King of Streams
The solution is not for fans to disregard them. How are we, the rabid fans that keep these games afloat (Division 2 player who threw money at it 4 times now, as recently as a month ago, checking in here), to know what will be shown?
What needs to happen is to have these things split off into different presentations that cater to specific subsets of the audience.
The Disney showcase was BAD. But I chalk that up to Disney never holding one of these (afaik), so I expected some wonkiness in presentation and content.
Ubisoft has no excuses, though. They pulled the 2022 equivalent of a Blizzard and its "don't you have phones?" gaffe by dedicating so much of its time to watered down mobile ports. They could (and should!) have severely reduced the play time by cutting the inane filler chatter (Sony's showcases are great at this) and totally spinning off all the mobile (and Netflix) stuff to a distinctly mobile-focused presentation of its own.
Give us 20-ish minutes of the heavy AAA console/PC heavy hitters. Bing bang boom. Then just release a Ubisoft Mobile (or whatever) preso dedicated to its spinoffs. Easy stuff. Audiences can choose where to spend their time and no one is let down (as hard).
@ShogunRok Jim Ryan is boring as hell, but at least he never makes an attempt to crack zingers during the PlayStation presentations he's featured in. Those constant quips and faked enthusiasm during the Disney and Ubisoft things drove me nuts.
@ShogunRok This is exactly how I felt watching the Disney presentation
release a 5-10min video on a game once per month or so. ie ubisoft, this month mirage, next month project red and so on. we get regular detailed updates.
These live streams are for the gaming journalists, not gamers. It's then their job to index out the content into individual articles/videos so gamers can then take a look at just what they're interested in.
"Sony’s yet to announce a PlayStation Showcase – in fact, the platform holder rarely announces anything at all these days. But we expect the manufacturer to have a better understanding of its audience the next time it does speak."
I'm not sure I fully agree with that. Sony is very inconsistent nowadays when it comes to the quality and pacing of their presentations.
However, the fact that they haven't done one since June suggests that they might have a lot of worthwhile things to show next time they do talk. They did way too many presentations last year and it was obvious they were stretching themselves thin content-wise.
Completely with you.
As someone who would be so excited for E3 and TGS, I now find myself just not watching any of these. Just not worth your time I feel.
@ShogunRok Nailed it! I was trying to pinpoint it but I think you did. The whole 'family' aspect always bothers me from anyone that isn't my actual family, this includes work too.
The problem with the modern showcases is that I don’t feel they understand their audience. They have to realize that we grew up with the E3 showcase format, which was professional yet fun. There was legitimate content that was treated as serious new developments. Heck, Wii Music or whatever it was, even seemed to be a meaningful announcement because of the sincerity of the presentation. Presentations now come off as advertising dross due to the tone of the presentations and their joke-y demeanor. They come off like the ads you’d see in Gamestop rather than important for the industry. It’s a shame. I still watch them all though.
It's been several years since I've seen a showcase that's blown my mind. Most everyone I've watched this year has been disappointing bar a couple. The June State of Play and FFVII 25th Anniversary livestream were highlights. With the likes of Ubisoft and Microsoft who played all their cards too early they have nothing big to announce and just give small updates at their respective presentations. Geoff Keighley shows are usually too long and boring with alot of filler. The other problem is leaks, all the big surprises in these shows are already leaked. We need Sony to come rescue us with a Showcase
I used to be a huge fan of gaming culture, the magazines, the journalism, the E3 event and so forth. Yet now, being older and likely just more jaded and aware of the world and corporations … I just don’t find it remotely appealing anymore.
I don’t “stan” a particular company or console, I don’t subscribe to magazines, even if E3 were around, it is just what it always has been, a corporate enterprise holding an event for other corporate enterprises to then show (often misleading) representations of their wares.
A moment on this and all the sister sites tells me the majority I need to know about all upcoming releases and console news. I don’t need or desire to sit through over an hour on a Friday evening of trailers.
I personally find my excitement for the gaming landscape as a whole is mostly faded, the games themselves excite me now. I no longer feel it necessary to watch or read of a rep for a company discussing said game.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve just realised that to me personally what any of these presenters, company reps, or companies themselves say is of no importance.
Because no matter what they show, I’ll still play what me and my family and friends find ourselves drawn to, and no matter how big the world, how amazing the graphics, how new of an engine, it’s still just another game desperately hiring all the shills it can to get my attention and wallet.
If I don’t expose myself to that stuff, it leaves me able to more freely make choices based on logic rather than excitement and fanfare.
I think if ubisoft made a separate stream just for AC which only included the danny part it would've been fine
Outside the big 3, ill just wait for the trailer recap articles on these 'showcases'. The Disney one was really the last straw for me...what a waste of time.
Most of these streams I don’t bother with anymore, even Geoff’s shows are too full of ads and it’s 30 seconds of one out of the blue game then straight into another for the next game and you barely have time to process it.
Sony’s latest haven’t been too bad to be honest though I find they tend to acknowledge expectations on Twitter beforehand so I’ll keep watching them but for the others I don’t have the time or energy to even have it on in the background. I come to sites like this to get a summary of the show and bigger announcements.
I find it very annoying some gamers act like this is supposed to be some sort of celebration or convention and have way to many expectations when it’s just some trailers. Stop putting these streams on a pedestal and know what you’re watching. How can they be “good” or “bad” when it’s just some reveals? Smaller games and devs would join these events to get some spotlight on their project that have very little or no advertising, simple as that. I find most of these streams useless and quite frankly, all of the journalism around it. All you really need is the PlayStation Store.
I'd have to echo some of the sentiments above.
As I've gotten older it seems like my excitement for these shows has dimmed a little.
Even if the show is objectively good the internet will tell us that it was terrible anyway.
I think the main reason for myself though is that there's so much news these days. There are more games and franchises than I realistically have time to play.
One thing I've noted is that since I've stepped back from it all a little and limited myself to just one or two websites while ignoring the shows that I know I won't have much interest in, when a Nintendo or a PlayStation show does come back around I'm genuinely excited for them.
A little bit of a gaming culture detox every now and then does me the world of good.
Similarly there was a period in my 20s where I'd play every game that topped the charts without considering if it was a game I even wanted to play.
I burned out hard and didn't know what I enjoyed anymore.
It's the same with all of these sites and shows - just stick to what you know you'll love and enjoy, ignore everything else (it will be a headline the next day anyway and you'll have missed nothing), and your excitement and hype will be genuine and very often rewarded.
And bloody hell, the names of the CEOs and the things the say don't matter. Get away from all of that stuff and just play for fun.
@ShogunRok it’s too cringy and feels so fake. As someone from the UK the shows feels very ‘Americanised’ (or is it spelt with a Z) so it’s hard to watch those segments but maybe even for Americans it is cringy as well
They have gotten worse for sure. The older E3 days and Gamescom were just the best. Left me thinking about the games days after the reveals. Over time they have become stale and showed us a lot of filler. Showed us too many repeats too.
These recent showcase have far too many things being thrown in that are of no interest for me. Take Ubisoft, shoving all that phone, Netflix and Apple TV down our throats but it's really Assassin's Creed that we showed up for. The AC parts were fine, but the rest of it before that wasn't. Gamescom made no sense adding game awards when there is already a show for that.
I don't think any of them really have much worth showing so they settle for what they have for the sake of having a showcase. They need to create a great playful one. Mix it up too. Don't be shoving phone game after phone game, Netflix games and then Apple TV or Black Adam at Summer game fest or even kojima at Gamescom with nothing to show.
It needs games and lots of it. Needs to be fun and exciting. Not phone after phone, TV then more TV, trailer after trailer without gameplay, bringing on hosts that go on and on with so much chatting (big problem with some of Microsofts shows). We should be seeing all those great games we will be playing, getting excited for them and having the snacks ready to enjoy the show. Don't want to feel like I'm sitting in the cinema watching just ads in bordom.
My kids and I watched the Marvel one and I was surprised by how many phone games were shown. The next day, we starting watching the Ubisoft show. When they got to their 2nd or 3rd phone game I just shut it off and would look it up after it was over and decided to play Rocket League instead. I don’t give a damn about phone games.
GRANTED, I’m getting to the point to where I’m accepting that hardcore gamers are NOT the focus in the entirety of gaming anymore. I find myself getting more and more disappointed year after year with being a long time video game fan. Even with Sony it feels like they care more about their PC and PS4 owners than they do with their PS5 owners.
When it comes down to it, hardcore or traditional gamers, whatever you want to call us are NOT the focus anymore.
They are all awful. Even a Logo makes it to these things.
1 - Announcement. 2 - gameplay. 3 - Date... Rinse and repeat. You do not have a few good ones, do not make it (indies/ Mobile do not count)
No need for 5 months of radio silence hoping for a "Direct"(looking at you Nintendo) Just announce games. Do not pull games from 3rd party shows just to renounce it again on your show months later.
At this point best to just skip them and catch the list at your favorite gaming site.
I gave up watching this sort of trite a long time ago.
Instead I just read about the highlights from those who are paid to sit through it instead (thanks PushSquare!)
The last couple years have taught us that 90% of these just aren't worth the time. I usually have them on in the background while working or doing something else, but the overwhelming majority of them are way too long and way too light on substance. Add to the fact we get one seemingly every other week and it's just a bad combination.
Unless you are a journalist, the smart move is to skip them and allow the jornalist to realy the information to you - like Push Square. They get paid to watch these shows so we don't have to.
A Tron visual novel??
I think the problem with publisher presentations is that their cookie jar is much bigger and has a lot of hands in it.
Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo presentations are easy: focus on the console and showcase relevant titles from first, second, and third-party games.
The publishers should forget about shows all together. Just drop trailers online and send out press releases to the relevant online publications/influencers - save the marketing time and money on lame theatrics and let the press do what it does.
I'll watch these shows if they happen to be during my workday, but like the Ubisoft one, there's no way in hell I'm dedicating any of my weekend to these extended commercials.
Unless it's E3 I really don't care. Nothing beats everyone coming together at the same time and place and celebrating gaming
what's worse than the presentation of these streams are the games that are on disply. by and large, the AAA space is creatively bankrupt and becoming more stale each passing console generation. an original IP that hits has become such a ratiry these days in the AAA space. the very fact that some people are still getting excited over the 25th entry in the assassins creed series is a grave concern to me. i cannot believe that the majority of gamers around the world are satisfied with cookie-cutter sequels that fail to innovate or bring anything new to the table... like, how are people so complacent with their expectations? right now, there isn't a single game from ANY AAA publisher that has been genuinely exciting. sure, god of war has my interest, but i already know what it is going to be. is anyone out there trying to break the mold and try something new anymore outside of the indi space (which is the only thing saving the gaming industry at the moment)? yes, i know games are more expensive to produce and publishers are more risk-adverse as a result, but how else do you find the next big thing? at the very least, take some chances on a AA project at half the budget and bring something new to the world once in a while!
Very few publishers have a good enough lineup to pad out a full stream. In general, I wish they'd just integrate announcements into Nintendo Directs, State of Plays, and/or trailers on Twitter.
The issue is marketing.
They don't want to show the game, they want to market it.
I've never experienced a good one so wouldn't necessarily say it's gotten worse lol.
They do all feel hella awkward, none of the folks ever have stage presence.
The green screens were funny though in the ubisoft showcase, haven't just spontaneously laughed about anything in a showcase like that before since the devolver ones.
Ubisoft is a French firm but did their showcase in an American format and it was so cringeworthy awful. To be fair, all their E3 showcases were the most horrific, bar EA.
Part of what makes Nintendo directs so good is that they focus on the games, and do it in a Nintendo way. They stick to their strengths. Ubisoft are trying to be something they’re not.
Don’t care for Marvel too much so missed that. Did tune into Ubi Forward, which was an absolute waste of time. The only thing I cared about was AC Mirage which was 3mins of cinematics.
Also couldn’t help but be distracted by how the presenters were skewed...given the recent allegations.
I do think the ‘direct-style’ is the way to go on. Initial excitement aside it never made much sense to me for all the publishers to battle it out & share the limelight during E3 week. Coming out most people only ever discussed a handful of games and everything else got buried for the rest of the year.
The problem is they're all doing the "E3" format, but without E3. It doesn't work. The E3 format is for E3, for a single unified event across a week, with all companies doing similar presentations rapid-fire. It works at E3. The investors, partners, and customers are watching and expect a drawn out pageant as part of the greater industry-wide presentation, like a market bazaar for video games hulking their wares. It doesn't work if you market and advertise your presentation to a specific market as a stand-alone event, and this is what it is.
But Nintendo's also strayed. The whole point of Iwata's |DIRECT| was to change Nintendo's image as an opaque, distant, disconnected corporate wall and bring the people behind the content |DIRECTLY| to you the player. He insisted on doing it himself, with an English broadcast anchored by himself to the point of spending weeks rehearsing the English script despite not actually speaking any English purely to make it a personal connection. That's what put the Direct on the map. Instead of an impersonal presentation on the E3 stage of puffed-chest corporate execs wowing investors and partners in smug speeches, it was a more humble, personal, "fireside chat" from the management to the customer.
Since Iwata's passing, Nintendo's Directs have become nothing but slick, rapid fire extended run-time commercials, preproduced by an external ad agency, the same agency/voice narrator used by several other companies. It's not really |DIRECT| anymore. It's the Nintendo Indrect. Or just a Nintendo informercial.
Sony has largely copied that format, and much as I would cringe through 45 minutes of Jim Ryan personally feigning excitement over details of Uncharted 5 as though he actually understands what's going on, I think I'd still prefer that to the soulless infomercials we currently get where I generally lose interest in 5 minutes and then just wait for Sammy to tell me what I saw.
I never thought I would say this but we need E3 back. It wrangled all of this stupidity neatly into one weekend where you knew it was time to drop the big one and wait until whatever mid year show Keighly has planned.
The video game Wild West is a scary place…
This is why I never watch the livestream. I always wait for it to be uploaded. Then I skip all the waiting and all of the fluff. I just watch the trailers and sometimes the developer interviews. It saves a lot of time.
My main gripe is the fact that they waste too much of everyone's time. Look, I'm here just to see some new release and watch some gameplay, be as direct as you can. Hell, even Sakurai released a video on how to do a presentation and its basically what Nintendo do with their Directs.
As much as Nintendo strayed from what Iwata's vision for Direct was, it is still more simple and straight to the point than whatever Disney and Ubisoft tried.
Ubisoft Forward this year was literally so cringe, like, the dancing bit, who thought this was a good idea? Utterly baffling.
In all seriousness I think Ubisoft are in trouble. Most of the stuff they presented just looked so dull to me, they are struggling to find a hit beyond AC.
Oh, yeah, definitely. Though, I'd argue, while the average Nintendo Direct has way better pacing and gets to the point in a much more 'direct' way (pun intended), they are just rapid fire commercials at the end of the day with the same overly cheerful voiceover every single time. During the Iwata days, they actually felt very real and personal. Kind of reflects the whole company nowadays though, to be fair ...but sure, they are still doing it much better than everyone else.
I think it's mostly because everyone else tries to make E3 showcases spread out across the entire year. Nobody wants that. E3 was only bearable because everyone was doing it at the same time over the course of a single week, so you could treat it as a yearly tradition, laughing at the massive corporations embarrassing themselves while also getting all the good stuff you want. When it's spread out like this, people just won't care as much anymore, and thus, the corporation behind it that obviously doesn't care about anything except your money is all that remains for most, pretty much.
E3 was so fun and exciting every year because it was so concentrated, and the live shows weren't pre- recorded fluff pieces, but live shows with a stage where things could go wrong, which gave it a certain "so bad it's good"- esque charm. Now, all that remains is the advertisement.
I still remember Nintendo's Wii U- themed direct in January 2013, just two months after release, and how shockingly transparent it was. You could instantly tell that they didn't sell as many consoles as they expected, and so they made an entire presentation just for upcoming releases, some that would't even see the light of day until half a decade later. Don't forget, it was that very presentation where Breath of the Wild was first announced.
Almost all they had were basic Power Point slides, text and a few very early beta images of a remake of Wind Waker and a Yoshi game that didn't even have a name. It may not have been reassuring back then, especially for me with a brand new console and no new games for months. Despite this, however, I will never forget that Direct in particular, just because of how shockingly transparent and down to Earth it felt for such a massive company. They had almost nothing, but wanted so desperately to show that the Wii U would get games ...eventually.
I hope you're doing well, Iwata- san ...wherever you are.
I just wait and watch the trailers themselves on Youtube. I don't care about people talking and such. Just show me the game or the movie previews.
The THQ Nordic Showcase was particularly nauseating.
These publishers could learn a lot from DE and tennocon.
Are we including Nintendo in this because if so I always enjoy their presentations a lot, same with the Pokémon Company.
Others, not so much…
I think Sony is spot on now.
For years everyone ripped on companies for announcing games too early and showing fmv mock ups that rarely bore any resemblance to the game that eventually surfaces. Meeting the publics demand for shows made that situation inevitable.
Now they are simply not saying anything, usually till they are much closer to launch, and I think thats much healthier.
I like the SOP format too, few cringe inducing suits trying to 'get down' with their audience, and just trailer after trailer, and we do see more gameplay these days, though we still need more!
We can moan at the infrequancy, but they are not in need of driving demand any more than exists already, and at least their small shows are relevant and not bloat.
Nintendo ones remain foccussed too. The others are clear examples of what happens when executives in a board room get involved, its just embarrassing.
I'm watching the Nintendo one right now and voices are terrible. They totally undersold Atelier Ryza 3 thanks to that awful narrator
Oh they're definitely getting worse. Aside from Sony's recent State of Plays and even the recent Nintendo Direct, those 3 were awesome.
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