laitimes

E3 and even gaming fairs are being swept into the dustbin of history

author:Ray Technology

As the most watched event in the game industry, both large and small manufacturers will announce their new game lineups or release some actual demonstrations at the E3 Game Show. However, since 2020, due to some objective factors, E3 has been suspended for a while, and even re-held for a long time, canceling offline exhibitions and only providing online activities. This has also greatly eroded the influence of E3, and they have chosen to participate in other exhibitions or hold their own online launches.

Just when everyone thought that the 2023 E3 Game Show, which was reconvened after three years, could return to the peak, on March 31, E3 Game Show organizers ESA and ReedPop announced the cancellation of the 2023 Game Show, for a very simple reason, such as Nintendo, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Tencent and many other game manufacturers said that they would not attend, and without core game manufacturers, the game exhibition naturally lost its meaning. In addition, the official statement revealed that even manufacturers who were willing to continue to participate before could not provide a demo version in cooperation with the exhibition, which has become one of the problems for E3 to continue to be held this year. ReedPop said that it will continue to maintain contact with ESA and hopes to continue to cooperate in future E3 exhibitions.

E3 and even gaming fairs are being swept into the dustbin of history

Source: E3 official Twitter

And if nothing else, not many game manufacturers will travel thousands of miles to E3 to participate in the exhibition, E3 game exhibition, this "youth" who has reached the age of 28, seems to be history from now on.

Why can't the 28-year-old E3 game show survive?

E3, translated as electronic entertainment exhibition, full name The Electronic Entertainment Expo, authoritative media said that E3 is an advance preview of the annual business war in the game industry, which also explains the importance of E3 in the eyes of game manufacturers.

E3 Game Show began in 1995, when it was the golden age of video game development, but limited by the scarcity of information dissemination at that time, so game manufacturers and accessory manufacturers around the world hope to use this platform to promote their new games to players, and E3 has gradually become one of the most important game exhibitions in the world.

E3 and even gaming fairs are being swept into the dustbin of history

Source veer.com Image has been licensed

Among them, the most eye-catching is naturally the red logo of Nintendo, the green logo of Microsoft XBOX and the blue logo of Sony PlayStation, which also form the "Three Musketeers" at the E3 exhibition, and other manufacturers are dotted among them to compete in order to attract the attention of players by showing their technical strength and innovation ability, throwing various gimmicks and big news, which has continued until 2019.

As mentioned earlier, the E3 Game Show, which has experienced 25 years of baptism, is no longer concerned by manufacturers and players, and there are two main reasons in Xiaolei's view.

The first is naturally the problem of price, E3 game exhibition originally relies on collecting manufacturer publicity fees and admission fees to operate, that is to say, each company wants to participate in the E3 exhibition needs to pay a certain fee, but also spend a lot of time and energy to set up booths and design posters. According to Tencent Games, game manufacturers want to rent the smallest and simplest booth at the E3 Game Show for 910 US dollars / day (equivalent to 6249 yuan), and large booths need 6657 US dollars / day (equivalent to 45716 yuan).

E3 and even gaming fairs are being swept into the dustbin of history

Source veer.com Image has been licensed

And this is not counting the booth decoration, carpets, floors, monitors, advertising banners, presentation equipment, lighting equipment, equipment handling, etc. (all require additional money), if you need the E3 organizer to hang a small window for you on the website and add another $1,000 (a day), the overall calculation needs at least hundreds of thousands of yuan, and this is still the 2016 E3 offer, it is difficult to imagine how horrible the E3 offer is today. This expense may not be much for a large factory with deep pockets, but it is already a pain for a small factory.

Not to mention the high cost and inefficient transmission of information, players who could not go to the scene at that time could only get relevant news through various newspapers, magazines and game forums. But now with the improvement of various live media and network speed, game manufacturers only need to hold an online face-to-face meeting to allow players around the world to quickly understand the news of the new work, which is much lower than the previous exhibition, and a live broadcast can cover all players around the world, obviously the network will be the lowest cost and most efficient form of release, it is no wonder that all game manufacturers today are through live broadcast to open a new game conference.

For example, Nintendo, as of press time, only the reprint video "The Legend of Zelda Kingdom Tears" reprinted by IGNON China on the Bilibili platform has exceeded 3.3 million views (more than 1.7 million views on the day of release), becoming the second most viewed video on station B on the day.

E3 and even gaming fairs are being swept into the dustbin of history

Source: Station B is mainly @IGN China

The second reason is that the E3 Game Show has gradually changed its taste, the original intention of the E3 Game Show is to promote more games to players, each manufacturer is eligible to appear, but then it basically became an exhibition serving the Royal Three (Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft), which eventually led to the embarrassing situation that the big manufacturers could not look at themselves, and the small manufacturers themselves could not look at themselves. Naturally, everyone is reluctant to spend money to participate in the exhibition, so the follow-up influence of E3 will only become smaller and smaller, and even many new players will not know the existence of E3.

In this highly informationized society, such a high-cost and inefficient form as large-scale offline exhibitions may be doomed to die, in fact, not only E3, large-scale offline exhibitions around the world are facing reform.

Maybe it's a good thing that game exhibitions are "history"?

From the above summary, we can also understand that in fact, it is not that manufacturers are unwilling to use the big platform of E3 to show their new works, but that E3 is now eating more and more ugly, and even investing millions of publicity dollars into the publicity effect is not as good as doing a live broadcast by themselves.

E3 and even gaming fairs are being swept into the dustbin of history

Source veer.com Image has been licensed

In addition, from the perspective of large manufacturers, choosing not to go to E3 also has their own considerations, in addition to saving related expenses, but also can accurately avoid technology exhibitions such as MWC and CES, although it seems that technology exhibitions have nothing to do with games, but in terms of popularity will inevitably be snatched away.

However, the cancellation of E3 will still have a certain impact on the entire game industry, Sony Nintendo Microsoft such a big factory naturally does not matter, but for independent developers and small game manufacturers has a huge impact, the unknown small factory itself has no exposure, all rely on a moment of broadcasting to attract players' attention to its works. At present, the E3 exhibition is canceled, and the small factory itself to hold the online conference is not very hot, and in the end, it is very likely that the game will not sell well or even lose money after the release.

Of course, as a game enthusiast, Xiao Lei still hopes that the E3 exhibition can continue to be held, on the one hand, he can collect enough information at one time, and will not stay up late this month to watch Nintendo's face-to-face meeting, and next month to stay up late to watch Sony's conference; On the other hand, we will never see those game manufacturers at the E3 game show crazy to throw the king in order to show the limelight. For example, the "Metal Gear Solid 2" trailer at the 2000 E3 exhibition, the "Half-Life 2" real demo in 2003, and the 2004 Uncle Sony's display of the cross-era handheld PSP that caused the audience to cheer passionately will also be completely history.

E3 and even gaming fairs are being swept into the dustbin of history

Source: Sony official

What makes Xiaolei even more regrettable is that Konami originally announced that it would announce its new work at the E3 exhibition, and the outside world once speculated that it would be the sequel to the "Castlevania" series and the reset version of "Metal Gear Solid 3", and now E3 has announced the cancellation, and Konami has reason to continue to rot.

E3 and even gaming fairs are being swept into the dustbin of history

Source: Konami official

All in all, today's E3 is no longer the biggest event in the game industry, its influence is not even as good as the later TGA, after the manufacturers gradually left, E3 only had one option left. To maintain the heat, E3 should reorient itself, otherwise the road ahead will only get tougher.

E3 Game Exhibition is not an era Xiaolei dare not draw conclusions without authorization, but it is indeed over.

Read on