E3 2023 in Doubt as More Publishers Pull Out

E3 is like a Jenga Tower and all of the publishers are the blocks

Eventually all of the blocks will pull out and the entire thing will collapse

Its over, it’s officially dead.

I miss E3. I used to enjoy tuning in for each conference. It was like an annual thing and it was fun.

It sucks all these companies have abandoned it to do their own virtual versions. From a business perspective I understand but as a consumer I preferred the old E3.

Idk guess its just nostalgia

@Jacko11 well if you say so

E3 was usually a good time and was looking forward to it more than any state of play.

lol

I'm pretty sure E3 isn't happening at this point.

I really miss E3. I used to take time and off and looked forward to June. The way the industry does announcements now feels flat no matter how big the title is. Theirs no build up or excitement, just "oh we have a video with some announcements in 2 days". Feel sorry for younger gamers that will never know the feeling E3 used to bring each year.

I think E3 used to cost publishers an insane amount of money. With COVID requiring virtualization, big publishers simply realized it wasn't worth it. E3 should change it's demographic to indie games and studios, charge far less, and occupy less space. Only way it can survive moving forward...

who cares? E3 was a show for big game related announcements and showcases. Now everyone watches that stuff through various social media services. If companies don't want to spend money for a big physical venue, that seems a good choice.

I suppose they could create a sort of summer game fest where they host a series of online events with big publishers since so many are actually doing their own thing around June anyway.

But E3 as we knew it is long dead. They better cancel it.

I just want to hear more news on Yakuza & Persona/SMT games. Come on, Sega. If you’re not doing E3, at least do your own presentation

Part of the confusion and mess around E3 is that people think it's just the press conferences — and they aren't part of E3 at all and often take place days before. It's like how people claim Nintendo hasn't been at E3 for years and just does the Direct thing, but Nintendo has consistently attended (well, once they came around to the idea of E3 back way back — look it up) and has had one of the largest booths on the show floor.

This confusion around E3 being press conferences is also how digital events are seen as substitutes, Keighley's shows are seen as competition, and everyone says there's no need for E3 in the modern era.

Now, maybe there isn't a need for E3. But the discussion should be around the trade show — which it actually sounds like it's not trying to be that at the moment — and not around the idea of announcements and press conferences.

I think of the years, the Internet has allowed consumers to feel like E3 is an event catering directly to them, and this hasn't been helped by publications live-streaming from the show floor direct to the end user. It didn't help when they started allowing anyone with tenuous links to the industry to attend, and then ultimately the general public. What started off being a way for the video games industry to carve its own path and find the respect it wasn't being granted at CES has now become some kind of twisted farce of itself where it's some sort of nightmarish parody of Disneyland.

There is a discussion around whether there's a need for E3 and whether it's relevant, but I personally strongly detest the fact it usually boils down to "Oh, because publishers can just do love streams to the audience." Because that's never what E3 was meant to be for or about.

Feel like Sega will mainly do another Like A Dragon stream as they have two of those in the works.

Its a shame but the normal E3 structure just does work anymore. Maybe better to be a digital exo or something

Ouch. It's all so depressing. I really don't know how Reed Pop, otherwise successful could have dropped the ball on this so extremely hard, unless ESA is pulling some kind of antics that are hurting it. It really makes no sense that companies on board are now exiting, and there has been less than 0 E3 communication from anything organized.

I don't feel like I'll ever really have the enthusiasm for the new things coming up in the industry I had from the E3 days. I have no interest in subscribing to "social channels" aka manual newsletters from companies, I have no interest in watching carefully edited music-backed pre-recorded infomercials that now masquerade as directs, let alone planning to watch them live as though edited commercials need a schedule time to watch them, let alone watching individual tiny presentations from every company randomly scheduled all around the year. E3 was a week to dedicate, celebrate games, listen to companies advocate what they were selling all at once, and really generated a special moment of awareness and hype for everything that was upcoming. Now? I don't even tend to know a game released until weeks or months later if I didn't see it here. It just shows up in a blog or twitter post one day and people are talking about it. And, frankly, Hookshot sites staff posts about new games are....I won't say more exciting, I'll say less boring than watching a slick music backed edited infomercial from the companies. I don't think I've bothered with the last 3 or for Nintendo directs, skipped the last Xbox presentation, I watched the last Sony one, only because it was VR related the day after hardware launch. The last one I watched a month later..... Just not interesting, time sensitive, or terribly meaingful or fun. The directs were interesting when Nintendo started them and made them entertaining. Now....just commercials. I can see them a decade later....there's no moment to get caught up in. The same ad is just as good next generation as it is now.

Not sure why they even bothered trying again. I used to love E3, but it’s an irrelevant relic in the digital age.

Even Sega? Wow. I wonder if Konami will be the only publisher left at e3 haha

Just put it out of its misery. 😥

I have visions of the event and it is just a solitary booth with a guy called Dave just hoping for death to consume him.

A bit sad, it was always nice to get a big dump of all the new games in one week.

E3 died years ago.

Far easier and cheaper to have your own conference at your own venue with people in attendance and others tuning in online.

It was fun whilst it lasted. The FF7Remake announcement is my last lasting memory from it.

@tameshiyaku I did.

Oh no. Does that mean no more E3? Damn. I missed the days when I used to get excited for e3 and watch so many cool games being announced. What will there be for E3 now?

That’s what she said.

I miss E#3, but when you charge astronomical fees to participate, it deserves to fade into the sunset.

@FenIsMightier the proof is in the pudding. If that really was what E3 was about, the publishers will show up on the trade floor. But if they don't, then it will be clear that that wasn't what they valued about E3, and that's it's just another one of many theories that's been generated by the outside community over the years.

I remember really wanting to attend an E3. See all the newest games, the hustle and bustle, the swag, the both babes, getting to see new hardware before most in person and potentially try it.

Man... I wish it was still like that. End of an era. Sony won't even do their Playstation Experience anymore which was at least close to E3.

*sigh

@ThomasHL I think your drawing the wrong conclusions. E3 this year clearly wasn't focused on being a trade show. They're clearly structuring it more as a convention, and that's evidenced by the ESA contracting ReedPop to organise it. If the focus isn't going to be on presenting new wares to industry figures and stock purchasers, then what value is there for publishers to spend what is reported to be an eye-watering exhibitor fee? That's not to mention the cost of the Disneyland-style booths.

It's the wrong conclusion to say that publishers only valued the press conferences, and it's even more wrong to assert that E3 was the press conferences. It's not, and plenty of exhibitors attended and didn't have conferences. It was a trade show that's lost its way and there's no need for another convention when PAX already exists. I don't blame publishers for pulling out. But it's not because "We can just do it digitally."

@FenIsMightier E3 are in much closer contact with the publishers than either of us. If the publishers wanted a trade show, they'd tell E3 they wanted a trade show and it would have happened.

I just think it's very spurious to suggest that the publishers really want to do something they've shown no indication of prioritising. Every publisher who has pulled out of E3 has retained the media event aspect of the event. They have not retained the trade show aspect. So I'm not convinced that the bit they valued is the bit that they haven't retained.

I feel sorry for any small companies that have been spent time and money making arrangements for this years E3.

Not cool bro.