Hype season for video games has changed since E3 ended
But maybe not in the ways you'd think.
They say E3 is dead, but you might not realize that if you looked at my work calendar for the coming week.
I will… Fly to LA on Thursday. Attend game showcases on Friday. Game demos and interviews on Saturday and Sunday (plus another showcase), and then do that again on Monday.
It’s busy, though a little tighter than it used to be.
When E3 was running, the events might stretch from a Saturday or Sunday to the following Thursday or Friday.
E3 may be done with. But much of what it was just keeps on going.
I’ve been covering this packed part of the year for over 20 years. It used to happen in May, then briefly jumped to July before settling into June for most of the past 17 years.
It ‘s always frantic, usually pretty interesting if ephemeral, since so much of it is about what might be, rather than what is.
It was never accurate to call this stretch “E3.” That letter and the number stood for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, which was held, in most years, at the Los Angeles Convention Center and usually started on the Tuesday of the aforementioned week.
Hosted by the Entertainment Software Association, E3 was technically a trade show: a warren of mega-booths where mega-companies could show their upcoming mega-games to retail buyers, press and the many, many people who conjured the credentials to attend the professionals-only show.
Here’s a few seconds of what it looked like in 2014, when I found myself between Nintendo and PlayStation’s giant booths
The part of “E3” that would most excite a lot of gamers—and the part that drove a ton of traffic to sites like Kotaku, where I used to work—were the showcases that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft held in the days before the trade show.
That’s where, in 2004, you’d see the then-new president of Nintendo of America talking about kicking ass and taking names, before the debut of a Zelda trailer.
That’s where, in 2006, Sony announced that the PlayStation 3 would cost $500-$600 (uh-oh).
That’s where, in 2008, Microsoft closed its show by announcing the then-stunning news that you’d be able to stream (!) movies (??) via Netflix (!?) to an Xbox 360.
Ubisoft hosted showcases, Square Enix did for a spell, so did Konami, which in 2010 pulled off the best/worst E3 press conference of all time. Those side events were a such a big deal that, in 2012, it was plausible to believe that publisher THQ intentionally announced a studio closure while an EA showcase was happening in order to bury the news (THQ denied it).
This year, there is no actual E3, but there’s still an “E3.”
The ESA’s four-day trade show in the LA convention center is gone, replaced by a three-day press-and-industry event called Summer Game Fest that occupies a chunk of indoor space in a city block in LA.
Here’s what SGF multi-day demo area looked like in 2022:
Not quite an LA Convention Center show floor, but it got the job done (and some companies, such as Bandai Namco last year, still find built E3-scale booths on the premises).
As for big-company showcases that embodied a lot of the larger “E3” spirit: Nintendo has promised a June event, focused on the rest of the year’s Switch releases, but they haven’t given a date. It is unlikely to be part of the coming week.
Sony already did their thing with a low-key State of Play showcase last week.
EA is skipping.
But a bunch are happening. SGF organizer Geoff Keighley will host a kick-off showcase at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood on Thursday, June 7. It’ll be less focused on new game announcements and more on updates about announced games, Keighley says (via Kotaku).
Microsoft will run theirs on Sunday, June 9 (and, thanks to industry consolidation, we can consider that a Microsoft/Bethesda/Activision/Blizzard/maybe-King showcase).
Ubisoft goes on Monday, June 10, with expected showcases of their upcoming Star Wars and Assassin’s Creed games.
There’s also something of a rivalry running throughout the week. In one corner, Keighley’s Summer Game Fest and a bevy of non-overlapping satellite events.
In the other, IGN’s three-day IGN Live, which will have appearances from Xbox chief Phil Spencer, the video game Squirrel with a Gun, and much more.
So, yes, we’ve still got a mid-year video game promotional circus.
What’s actually different
This post-E3 hype season has been running for a few years, since Covid lockdowns largely ended. That’s long enough for a few patterns to emerge:
Much less business talk. There was a time when E3 showcases included slides of business performance updates. At E3 2008, Sony spiced it up by running the slideshow as a custom level in the editable sidescroller LittleBigPlanet. Soon, the companies just dropped that stuff. Gaming business people used to talk at these things. Not so much anymore, and certainly not in the Summer Game Fest era. As a reporter, I used to be able to easily book E3 interviews with executives from all the major first- and third-party game companies. Much of that dried up years ago, as the focus tightened onto game demos and interviews with game developers.
More attention on the present. E3 used to be all about the future, some of it frustratingly far away. Recent mid-year showcases have spent more time promoting games we can play really soon. It helped last year that several big releases—Street Fighter 6, Diablo IV, Final Fantasy XVI—were coming out in June, but the rise of live service games has also produced more promotion of what’s coming imminently in games that are already out. This year, for example, Ubisoft will devote part of its showcase to detailing The Division 2’s “Year 6,” which is likely to start next week.
Fewer voices from Japan. For years, E3 was a reliable place for me and other games reporters to get rare interview time with developers from Nintendo, Square Enix, Capcom and other top Japanese companies. For Nintendo, especially, this was a unique moment, because their developers generally weren’t put in front of reporters without a massive week-long promotional reason to do so. As a bonus, the fact that many of the senior developers at these companies had long runs in the industry meant that you could be chatting with an elite game designer about Pikmin 3 and suddenly the conversation might turn to Zelda II. An interview about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 could become a chat about Xenogears. At this year’s events, some Japanese developers, including Sega’s Sonic honcho Takashi IIzuka, are set to speak. But if you look closely at coverage from the past decade you’ll notice that a certain kind of interview that emerged in bunches each E3 season has largely disappeared.
Item 2: Not-so-lost E3 memories
The following are things I’d forgotten about E3 but rediscovered while researching the preceding story:
At my first E3, in 2001, I wound up with three “overstuffed press-kit-filled GameCube/Xbox/PS2 backpacks.” Overwhelmed, I gave one of the bags away on the spot to one of the “swag-hunter”s who hung outside the pre-E3 showcases. I believe the GameCube bag was shaped like a GameCube. Maybe that’s the one I gave away?
At E3 2008, I spent part of an Xbox press conference passing notes to then-PlayStation executive Phil Harrison (More shocking: the video I made for MTV about it is still online; most of my clips from that era have vanished).
Ahead of E3 2012; I publicly exchanged emails with Keighley and game designer Peter Molyneux about what to expect at the show. As a bonus, I noted how my thinning hair and Molyneux’s bald top were going to make Keighley, in my words at the time, “look like you've got a lion's mane on your head.”
At the penultimate E3 2013, Take Two Interactive had the chillest E3 booth I’ve ever seen, complete with simulated blue sky. Maybe they stopped having E3s once they realized nothing could top it?
Item 3: In brief…
🎮 “We are being faced with constant, targeted harassment from people who see diversity as a threat,” actor and game designer Abubakar Salim said on social media on Friday, in response to negative reactions to his studio’s debut game Tales of Kenzera: Zau.
In April, when the game was targeted for supposed forced diversity ahead of its release, Salim told Game File: “I have no control over what people think or feel…What I can essentially do, though, what I feel like I have control over, is delivering an experience that is authentic and true.”
🤔 “Almost all the staff” of Take Two label Private Division were laid off during cuts at the publisher in April, IGN reports. The outlet says Take Two has nixed two upcoming publishing deals.
💰 “Expectations for us are high and we aim to drive improving profitability,” PlayStation’s new co-CEOs, Hideaki Nishino and Hermen Hulst said in a publicly posted message to Sony’s gaming team today, as they begin to lead the division.
🥽 PlayStation VR 2 will require a $60 adapter to work with PC-based VR games, when PC compatibility for the formerly PS5-only headset begins on August 7, per a Sony announcement.
😲 The Japanese firm Round One is looking to turn more vacant floorspace in American shopping malls into arcades, drawing lessons from arcades in its home country, Bloomberg reports.
👀 Ubisoft’s Toronto studio is joining Ubisoft Montreal to work on the long-in-development remake of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, according to an official hiring announcement.
The remake was announced in 2020, initially targeting a January 2021 release.
Was that 2004 Nintendo announcement where Shigeru Miyamoto lept on stage with Link's sword and shield? I saw people at the front literally cry during the announcement. I lost a lot of respect for gaming journalism that day.
This was a nice look at the E3 era - thank you!