Yeah it used to be the big one, all the developers and big brands would come together all at once with big reveals and showcases, ESA itself is also partly to blame as the prices for booths started getting stupid in the latter years and smaller indie devs got priced out, and started doing their own reveals and showcases.
Once the big guns like Sony and Nintendo left to do their own thing it was pretty much doomed. The whole point was that everyone came together at once for a big expo, and you would get a big dump of new stuff to look forward to.
Livestreaming becoming commonplace was a big part of it. Why would a brand go through the expense of setting up a presentation and booth in E3 when they can name the where, when and how, in a much more controlled fashion, for much cheaper, to reach more eyes directly.
The primary purpose of E3 for them was as a marketing space so when a more convenient form of doing it appeared, it was done.
It went from an in-industry only trade show where they could basically show off to other devs and bounce ideas off each other to nothing more than a dolled-up hype train.
What ruined it was over commercialization and making it a public event, turning it from an developer conference to a gigantic fucking ad.
I still remember E3 as “the weeks when all gaming Youtube channels went to shit” because they all went to E3 and instead of their usual high quality content they had all kind of crap content about games that weren’t even out yet and wouldn’t be for years in some cases.
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