Will there ever be another E3?
I have never missed an Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3, since attending my first one in Atlanta in 1998.
There, I had my first real live view of the center of the global games business, which was on the cusp of growing into a multi-billion-dollar industry. I could already sense the excitement of the big things to come, as Take-Two had just bought BMG Interactive, my employer, at the time, and change was about to happen, especially because a group of former BMG Interactive employees from the UK were in the process of founding Rockstar Games in New York.
But back to the show, at that time, it was an industry-only event, and strictly no consumers were allowed. So the attending journalists had exclusive access and communicated the big reveals, the first looks, and the exciting scoops to the rest of the gaming world, who couldn’t attend the show. 1998 was a glorious year for video games, and many legendary franchises were exclusively shown at E3 for the first time.
E3 moved back to Los Angeles in 1999, where it had originated in 1995, and the show got bigger and more glamorous with the influence of Hollywood and the introduction of the industry-changing PlayStation 2, which Sony premiered to the Western world at this E3.
With the start of the new Millennium, heavyweight Microsoft entered the video game business and showcased its very first Xbox console at E3. It’s fun and a bit cringy to watch Bill Gates and The Rock introducing the Xbox at Microsoft’s big E3 press event 20 years after it took place.
This E3 was a crazy show for me as I was taking care of all German PR & Marketing appointments for all Take-Two published games. The reason why this was so challenging, but rewarding at the same time, was that the main Take-Two Interactive booth was in the North Hall showcasing Rockstar Games and other Take-Two titles, but I also had appointments in the South Hall at the Bungie Booth where they demoed an incredible presentation of Halo on PC. Take-Two was still the publisher at that time, but shortly after E3 it was announced that Take-Two had sold their 19.9% share in Bungie and the global distribution rights of Halo to Microsoft. In hindsight a grave mistake, but important for Take-Two to stay afloat at that time.
Furthermore, my duties also included press and marketing appointments at the Gathering of Developers or GodGames “The Promised Lot” which was outside of the E3 halls in a parking lot. The benefit of this location was that people could party with live music, beer, and other drinks while incredible games like Max Payne, Mafia, and others were shown in air-conditioned and very comfortable trailers. I probably walked a hundred miles between those 3 locations during the days of the show, but it was so worth it.
At next year’s E3 in 2001, Mike Wilson, CEO of GodGames, who wasn’t happy with their business agreement with Take-Two, dressed up as Jesus and carried a large wooden cross with a Take-Two logo around The Promised Lot and performed all kind of other shenanigans. In August 2001 the GodGames offices in Dallas, Texas were closed by Take-Two Interactive.
The press coverage of E3 slowly but surely shifted from print to online during the following years and First Party press conferences (now with Microsoft as a new major player) got bigger and better as did the booth sizes of the Third-Party publishers as well as the budgets associated with them. This escalation continued until 2006 when some of the big publishers started complaining about the exploding costs of E3 and questioned the ROI.
This led to a completely new concept for E3 and also a new date, which was shifted from May to mid-July. The show was moving on from taking place in the huge L.A. convention center to a few hand-picked Santa Monica hotels. While this setting was more intimate and less stressful than the noisy video game circus which E3 had become in previous years, somehow the spectacle of the big show and the attention it could draw went noticeably missing. The attendance numbers decreased from about 60,000 people in 2006 to just 10,000 in 2007 and only 5,000 in 2008.
While the specialist press was still covering E3 and many journalists actually appreciated the quieter setting, the appeal to the general interest press had decreased — E3 was just not a major event anymore. Michael Pachter (industry analyst) and others were calling this out and the ESA (Entertainment Software Association), who owns the E3 trademarks and hosts the show, reacted and moved it back to the Los Angeles convention center once again in 2009.
In 2009 E3 was not only back at the same location before the move to Santa Monica, but also the set-up of the show was mostly the same as before. Only the registration process was a bit stricter and the attendance was capped at 45,000 instead of the up to 70,000 attendees it had in its record year in 2005.
The show didn’t change much within the next years, but the Pre-E3 press conferences from Microsoft and Sony got bigger and more important and opened the E3 week, even before the official trade show had started.
Some of the big third-party publishers followed that trend and also focused more on their press conferences with carefully scripted shows, including world-exclusive announcements and expensive trailers to showcase their next big games.
This went hand-in-hand with the shift from print to online journalism as well as the rise of social media (especially Twitter & Facebook) and community platforms like Reddit. The logical next step was live-streaming the press conferences to the world, so now the latest news and industry buzz was delivered live globally directly to consumers in real-time.
Nintendo took advantage of this in 2013 and changed from its traditional E3 press conference to a new and online-only format with the Nintendo Direct E3: A presentation on upcoming first and third party games that airs live during E3. The direct to consumer shift had a further impact to E3 as in 2016 Electronic Arts, who was a longtime supporter of the show and always had the prime spot in the West Hall of the L.A. convention center, decided to abandon their E3 show-floor presence completely in favor of a consumer approach with a fan-event called EA Play.
To counter this initiative ESA decided to shift course for the next E3s and allowed a limited number of consumers onto the show-floor. While it helped to create more buzz at the show it failed to turn E3 into a true consumer show like the PAX shows or gamescom in Germany. On the other hand, a lot of the B2B meetings had shifted to the new J.W. Marriott hotel at the L.A. Live area and a few other new hotels that had sprung up in the same area in recent years.
More companies followed suit and gave up their E3 presence during the following years and so in 2019 large open spaces in the convention center could be seen behind some of the big booths which occupied the prime spaces in the convention center.
E3 2020 was already in trouble before the Coronavirus hit the events business with full force. Sony had announced that they would not take part in the show for the second year in a row, despite their plans to introduce PS5 in the summer and release the new console later this year.
Geoff Keighley declined the offer to produce this year’s E3 Coliseum show because he wasn’t happy with the direction of E3 in 2020. He had produced and hosted the E3 Coliseum event, a live-streamed show that welcomed developers and various stars onstage near the L.A. Convention Center throughout the run of the convention, for the past three years.
The Coronavirus pandemic made any remaining plans for E3 2020 obsolete and the future for E3 seems uncertain at best. Other major game industry events like GDC and Gamescom will host their events virtually this year, but E3 did not make that move. The E3 homepage lists various virtual press conferences and events from first- and third-party publishers, but it also still features a lot of outdated information about the 2020 show, which didn’t happen.
While many of the virtual press conferences and game showcases from publishers garnered decent press coverage, Sony managed to kill it with their PS5 digital event with more than 3 million live views, trending globally on Twitter and a lot of mindshare on gaming and lifestyle sites. This was way more than they had previously achieved via their E3 live press conferences. So, the question seems obvious: Will there ever be another E3?
I believe this will depend on developing the right concept and the support of the industry. At this point, I am not convinced that most companies who were still attending E3 during the last years will want to continue E3 as in 2019. In my view, the concept which would work without drastically downsizing the show would be to follow the gamescom approach and separate the B2B and the consumer show.
This way E3 would still keep the big booths with all their bells and whistles, cool game artworks, hands-on stations, oversized trailer presentations, etc., and it could be a true festival of gaming and allow full consumer access without crazy ticket prices as in previous years. Instead of only a few 1,000 consumers, the show could easily host 150,000–200,000 consumers or more. Gamescom 2019 hosted about 360,000 consumers but the gamescom convention area in Cologne is twice as big as the one in L.A.
A future E3 would also have to fully embrace influencers as the new popstars of gaming and include their audiences, too. Everyone would be welcome including Hollywood celebrities, musicians, and whoever else would want to show up to reach a highly engaged audience.
For us, the game industry people the meeting rooms for all the B2B action would be in the nearby hotels, which had become a trend at recent E3s for most companies. The convention center should allow one press & industry day which would suffice to give journalists and selected influencers enough access to the show-floor before being flooded by gamers galore.
This might all just be wishful thinking as we are still very much in the middle of a global pandemic and no one knows for sure if and when we will have big conventions again, but I sincerely hope that E3 can be resurrected as a big festival of gaming where people from all over the world come together in real life as well as virtually and celebrate video games not just as a great industry, but also as a medium which has a meaningful impact on modern culture.