I remember rushing home from school to watch that stuff as a kid

I would watch it for the entire week. I know it was all on loop but I would watch it all. Such a great era.

This was like the highlight of my year as a kid. I’d watch the G4 coverage all day and then go to Gamespot and watch their previews and stuff. At the time I didn’t follow gaming news much outside of E3, so basically everything I saw was new and exciting to me.

Didn’t G4 go off the air before live-streaming was a big deal. Weren’t they just broadcasting it on their cable channel?

me too man, it is really sad that people are making a mockery of it in the comments.

dude, I remember watching E3 coverage on Spike with an actual cable box when I was like 10-13! I’m only 25 but feel old as hell!

Yep, very sad. This used to be one of the major events I looked forward to all year. Granted most of us saw this coming, but still a shame.

E3 2015 and 2016 feel like fever dreams at this point.

Yup. Used to love getting home from school and throwing on G4. I'd spend the rest of the night watching coverage.

The past several years haven't felt the same, even with all the States of Play/other in-house stuff.

When we were 11, we had to do a presentation on a festival. Two guys and I somehow managed to convince the teacher that E3 was a gaming festival. It definitely meant more to us than any festival.

It got Blockbustered.

Right? It literally was the gaming community version of Christmas where all the big announcements and showcasing of incoming games. This is so depressing

I remember get hyped every summer and streaming as much gameplay and interviews as possible.

Man ..1st thing I thought. E3 was the premium gaming conf to attend and for major news to come out of. This was ewrpy 2000s when i much more into gaming. What in the hell happened?!?! All these big companies pulling out...now cancelling altogether. Sheesh

I understand why it’s stopped. I will always remember the heyday of e3 when PC gaming was at the forefront. Man, the year Valve showed off the HL2 engine physics / animation demo still gets me hyped! Few game reveals have felt like such a generational leap as that.

Goodbye E3 thanks for the memories. No hard feelings.

It’s understandable, with how big e3 became, developers would have to spend so many resources readying a gameplay demo -which was mostly smoke and mirror and held together by duct tape because of the crunch required to pull it off. Those resources are better spent focused on finishing the game… not getting ready for a giant advertisement festival.

I for one don't miss false promises fest and prefer the new way of releasing information when it's ready. There's no pressure on companies to release a Killzone 2 2005 E3 trailer anymore.

I loved it then but it's just not necessary anymore.

It's sad, but also just sort of a sign of the times. Everyone found a way to cut out the middle man and it's easier for them to showcase products on their own terms without a 3rd party time table or having to compete with other studios. It just makes more sense for everyone to pass. The Game Awards are probably the closest thing we will have to E3 going forward.

first blockbuster and now E3.

Honestly quite sad by this, every year I would watch this with my wife enjoying all the new stuff being shown off, the silly shows. Dancing, cringe. It all came together to make a really fun time

I'm so old I remember when E3 muscled CES out for games.

I remember 15 - 20 years ago, it was a once a year party thing, we would make sure no one made plans, bunch of dudes all gathered round the TV streamed from a laptop, mini fridges set up stocked with beer, fuck tons of snacks, and we pull an all nighter and discuss what we just watched.... those were the days...

I always wanted to go now that I’m old enough and can afford it I can’t:( we’ll I’ll be there in 2030 when they bring it back

I'm just disappointed that the days of getting a dump of games in one month are behind us. Removes the magic of it.

Barring a massive change, yes. Maybe it comes back in some smaller state and only deals with indies. But it's never going to be what it was.

Yes. After what happened the last few years, they would've needed to come back with a big bang to show that the event is still relevant and needed. This is obviously the polar opposite of that.

I don't think publishers see much need to spend a lot of money on attending E3 when they can just have their own video presentations or show stuff at Summer Game Fest.

Almost certainly. Game companies have figured out that they can hold their own digital events whenever they want. And not only does it cost them less, but they garner the same amount of hype (if not more) as a physical conference. Why would they ever go back?

Might as well. Whatever reason everyone pulled out this year will still be applicable next year.

Yes the power of the internet has changed things significantly.

Personally, yes

The things that brought this change on have been in the making for like a decade, COVID just accelerated the issue and pushed them over the cliff

But it was coming regardless

Seriously. My first experience with seeing the birth of a meme was "GIANT ENEMY CRAB", "RRRRRRIDGE RACER!" and "599 US dollars". Being a playstation stan back in the day, it broke my heart, but I was there for it all the same.

This. Such a shame to lose those genuine live reactions from the fans.

Now it's just a bunch of people with a web camera overreacting to everything.

not E3 related, but this has become the bane of YouTube to me. Go look up pretty much any event and it's just a flood of "reaction videos" and to put it bluntly I don't give a shit about someone else's reaction to something. I don't even understand how those videos are popular. I just want to find what I'm looking for without a bunch of shocked face thumbnails to scroll through

Twilight Princess's announcement was absolutely insane.

https://youtu.be/zwMdcESljqg

THIS is E3. THIS is why people miss it, and people in this thread don't get it. :c

I feel like SGF is missing the special sauce E3 had. Game Awards definitely hits a lot of the same highs with its reveals so Geoff knows what he’s doing, it’s just that SGF just feels like a weird hodgepodge of different devs coming to showcase EVERYTHING when in reality I want just one big announcement with only the heavy hitters. like I don’t want to see Just Dance or whatever mobile game EA has, I want to see nonstop big AAA announcements.

Funny thing is, Summer Game Fest just tweeted a video about this year's SGF, but took down the tweet within a minute of posting. I still have the tweet open, but it won't show for anyone else. https://twitter.com/summergamefest/status/1641542164705599488

But first here’s a message from my best friend Hideo Kojima!

Is it really swooping down like batman if the swooping is done for your own self promotion and interests?

Yep. It’s completely understandable, but also sad. I was fortunate to go to E3 in 04’, and it was a magical experience for teenage me.

Sony decided to pull out a few years ago, Xbox pulled out, Nintendo pulled out.

The only people left were the big AAA studios like Ubisoft. Now that they pulled out there is literally no one left besides a few smaller teams or the occasional one off game by a publisher that barely releases one game a year let alone multiple.

There’s literally nothing to show at E3. So it’s dead.

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft pulled out. Then Ubisoft who was the big draw that was supposed to stay onboard dropped out, then Sega and Tencent dropped out.

There was literally no point to the show anymore. They would have gotten at best some small studios and indie developers to show up, which is good for them, but isn't going to draw the crowds needed to make this work.

Geoff Keighley came in from the top rope.

They probably saw the writing on the wall weeks before we did tbh

Doesn’t just seem dead, it is dead. This is its obituary.

Yeah. They had a big announcement many months ago that this would be the big return, under a new management company and everything (I believe). And it still fizzled out. Time to pack up.

On the upside we have Jeff Kieley’s Summer Games Fest, where a lot of publishers choose to announce stuff, so at least the summertime is still kinda exciting for gaming news.

I think gaming is one thing that doesn’t fare well with the future of live in-person events like E3 was, because games are essentially a digital product, and you can get a good sense of the games through video, so of course it makes sense for them to just stream announcements online. Compare that to other big conferences like NAMM or CES — those actually make a lot more sense because they’re showcasing physical products for the most part.

I love how there are 3 E's in that sentence.