E3's Slow Shrinkage Continues

Yep, that pretty much describes E3

As someone who attended the earliest Electronic Entertainment Expos (the E3 show) and continued to attend over many years, the slow shrinkage of the show has been apparent for years. The E3 show has been shrinking in many ways -- relevance, floor space, attendees, and importance. This last year saw two of E3's major exhibitors, Activision and Electronic Arts, abandon the show floor altogether. EA instead opted to produce EA Play, a show aimed at fans (not the professionals who attend E3) that took place at Club Nokia, the small expo facility located next to the LA Convention Center where E3 is held. This year, EA just announced that EA Play will again be held, but this time it's in Hollywood at the Palladium Theater, some seven miles away.

There's really not much reason to attend E3 any more. Most of the major events are livestreamed, and there will be extensive coverage on the show floor via Twitch and other streamers. The games being shown are often difficult to get in to see -- sometimes the lines can take hours to get through. Even with a press pass, some games are difficult to get hands-on time with. If you have face-to-face meetings with executives, that could be worthwhile -- but that time is hard to book, and the noisy environment often makes it difficult to conduct interviews.

Originally the intent of E3 was to show off the upcoming holiday product lines to retail buyers in order to book sales for the next several months. That was hugely important, because the holiday months represented the bulk of game sales and profits. Now, of course, things are much different. Retail sales account for less than half of console game revenue. Console games are no longer the largest segment of revenue in games -- that's been taken over by mobile games. Heck, even PC games are getting close to topping console game revenues, and PC games aren't even sold in stores any more.

The E3 show once occupied the entire LA Convention Center, including the downstairs Kentia Hall. That enormous space is no longer used. The two main exhibit spaces are no longer jampacked with booths -- in fact, there's plenty of open spaces, with large areas devoted to lounges (chairs and tables), non-profit exhibits (of old games), or just bare concrete with some tables for the thinly used food concessions selling highly overpriced convention food. (Nowadays, anyone who can visits the food trucks parked across the street, which offer a variety of tasty cuisine at prices lower than the convention center's tired menus.)

The fact that big companies like Activision see no point in spending millions to put on a big E3 show should tell you just how important the show is these days. You should expect even more defections from the show this year, until at some point the whole thing shrinks into a smaller space or a very different event.

The reality is that publishers like EA and others realize it's far more important to connect directly with consumers than to connect with retailers or journalists. Besides, in an increasingly more platform-agnostic market, brands are more important than promoting a specific hardware platform. You'll see that Sony and Microsoft will still have plenty of reasons to show hardware, of course -- that's still a strong seller at retail.

As for me, I plan once again to take in E3 remotely and avoid the traffic and the crowds. It will be interesting to see what Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo will show off, but going hands-on can wait for a less frenetic venue.