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.