How would you feel if E3 went away?

You've heard it for years but more than ever recently that maybe we don't need E3 anymore. There are too many other events that are more friendly and ideal for the audience plus live streams have made all the showmanship seem unnecessary. I personally still love that one day when shit ton of video game announcements happen but I'm wondering if people really don't care anymore.

Sad. I always like to watch this big event where all the games get announced.

I'm with you on loving just the metric ton of announcements that happen on that big press conference day. It's always just been so fun to be overloaded like that. That being said, I don't think I'd be real surprised or even that broken up if it didn't happen. Honestly the biggest bummer for me would be losing GB's E3 press conference streams and late night shows.

I guess I wouldn't care too much. I enjoy going through the motions of sitting down and watching a bunch of new content and announcements, but if it was gone I wouldn't miss it too much. I think it's more important as a press event for them to get hands on demos and time with products. If they dropped the portion of it that's just people standing on stage showing trailers I wouldn't mind too much.

I actually really like nintendo's approach of just putting out videos every now and then. I'd prefer that over all the on stage junk.

I'd miss the press conferences, and watching GB talk over the press conferences.

Everything else, I could probably lose. So I'd be okay if each company just ran their own annual conference, but then most of them do that anyway independently of E3 as well. I quite like the once-a-year huge stay-up-late info dump approach.

The biggest thing for me would be losing the landslide of info and the GB streams, the E3 talkover stuff is some of my favorite.

I'd miss it. I love the big, indulgent, gala that E3 can be. Plus press conference day is always a great time to just lie around and soak in video games for a while.

I would be bummed out if they got rid of E3. Along with new game announcements it has always been a good way for me to see a lot of games at once. Sure they might be able to get the same info out with a smaller event but it is cool to see it all under one banner.

I think we kind of need E3, in the sense that it's the only event that we've all agreed is the "serious businessy event where stuff happens". If we lost the E3 we have now, I think the industry would almost be required to find a replacement, if only for convenience.

E3's impact on players is negligible; it would really fuck with people that cover games though.

I'd be pretty bummed out. I've always enjoyed E3 as an event to watch with friends, and there's something about having one huge event centered around new games that really excites me. Sure, there may be better ways to announce and show games, but I'm not just watching for the announcements. I'm watching for the spectacle, entertainment and everything around the announcements in addition to the new games. I like talking with my friends about how a conference totally bombed just as much as the games that were shown.

I would be sad. I have good memories of going to e3 with friends for a couple years back in the mid-2000's. Kentia Hall never forget. I also just like the big event aspect of it when you can binge out on video game news and get a glimpse of new hardware. It's exciting. I think it's important to have a big event like e3 to raise the profile of the industry as a whole.

I would really, really miss the press conferences. That part of E3 is exciting, and watching them has become a cornerstone of being a person who's excited about games. If E3 didn't exist, there wouldn't be that world wide swell of excitement about games and I'd really miss that. Granted, overhyping stuff can be a real problem, but I kind of see E3 as the only time to really get excited about announcements at all. The cluster of big reveals at E3, and how they get revealed, would be a sad thing to lose.

I wouldn't really give much of a fuck, not sure the last time I cared about any game that got announced at E3, and the actual press conferences are the most cringey poorly done things anyway.

It would be a net positive to the medium. I'd miss it but like a drug addict misses drugs.

If they'd still do scheduled press conference-type reveals I'd be cool with it. Like a yearly gamer briefing. 'Hey, Microsoft here, here's what's coming up this year and a look at next year. Also, here is our new slimline Xbox One model blablabla, check out this Holo Lens crap blablabla, here's all the games blablabla'. I still really want stuff like that.

I have no strong feelings one way or the other.

I'd definitely miss the pomp and excitement of the rush of pressers, and the insanity of Giant Bomb After Hours. GB@E3 is proooobably my favourite stuff from the site.

If they got rid of the showfloor but kept that stuff, it wouldn't really make a huge difference to me. If all that went away I'd miss it for sure, but move on just fine.

I like watching the GB stuff, and I still get excited about video games, so I'd be pretty bummed if it went away.

I would miss the GB coverage, but that's about it.

I would miss the event. I think that gaming, as a culture, needs a central expo to celebrate the new and exciting future of the industry. Whether that is PAX, e3, or the return of Spaceworld, I hope that we get to see theese big events in the future.

Crushed. I look forward to E3 more than Christmas. The Press Conferences are the single most exciting gaming event of the year.

Two words: Who cares. Just put out games when they're complete. I no longer need the endless cycles of hype and trailers and previews and betas and preorder campaigns and all the other nonsense in my gaming life.

I mean, on the one hand I really like watching business people try and appeal to the youth in their presentations because it's always funny in that schadenfreude way. Who didn't love it when Aisha Tyler interviewed that guy dressed as the Assassin from Syndicate last year? On the other, the only thing I really care about are surprise announcements and trailers. One of those is a rare thing these days and the other just gets dumped to Youtube five minutes later anyway so all I'd be missing is the awkward.

Yep.

@basketsnake said:

Agreed.

I'd miss it. I know the games press guys always go "uuugggh E3 is a nightmare" and it might be for them but for me, someone whose a consumer of all things video games, it's an enjoyable few days of watching press conferences and seeing what the companies game plan is for the next year. Its the weekend when the big players all have to come along and say "ok, we're doing this" and comparing what's happening.

It wouldn't be the same if they just got rid of it and then started doing the events by themselves. You wouldn't get the same reaction if say Microsoft announced their price of the Xbox One in January and then in April Sony came along and announced the PS4 price. That those things happened within a couple of hours of each other made it what it was.

Also, it's super easy for me to be shown a trailer for something, and then ignore them telling me to preorder or whatever. I don't get behind the hype train of E3, I just like seeing what the companies are planning to do.

I really like the Giantbomb E3 content, but I trust the guys to come up with something to replace it on the site if the games industry gets less decadent. I just hope it isn't a sign that the big publishers can't find a working business model anymore.

Empty. Despondent. Lost. Confused. Crestfallen. Angry. Vengeful. Bloodthirsty. Murderous. Relieved. Guilty. Sorrowful. Regretful. Forgiven. Redeemed.

In that order.

Could not care less. I find E3 to be really boring. Usually it's just a lot of people giving awkward presentation where they try and pretend to be a human being instead of a poorly modeled synth. I play everything on PC so the console specific stuff doesn't matter to me and I can get the all of the E3 news by reading a couple of articles in 15 minutes. I don't think it really serves much of a purpose any more.

I'll never go to E3, and the same games will come out either way, so I guess I wouldn't care.

E3 is an event I look forward to each year and especially these days with how accessible it all is via the internet. I look forward to the cringe, the excitement and the unknown that E3 brings with it.

Being from the UK it does mean I have to watch in the middle of the night but it feels all worth it.

The announcements would still happen, they'd do their own thing like EA or go to Gamescom/PAX/wherever.

I kinda went from actively wishing it would go away to enjoying it once GB started doing their nightly show each year. As an invite only event, it's not something I can really aspire to ever attend.

I always look forward to E3, in part to see what that year's Giant Enemy Crab moment is going to be.

I'd surely miss it. I love the info dump of the press conference days. I can sit an aabalyze why it's unnecessary but damn it I enjoy every bit of it, good and bad, and that's the end of that. I think it's mostly the magic of potential surprises that have been withheld just for E3 that is most exciting; the anticipation of surprise is a fun feeling. Steadily releasing info throughout the year just doesn't bring that anticipation of the impact one day could have on a hobby of yours.

I'd be bummed. It's just so much fun to get a giant dump on info about new video games. We also see stuff that completely surprises us, and get a sneak peak at upcoming consoles! I love it.

I'd be pissed because I wouldn't get to watch the GB crew laugh at the ridiculous shit that happens during the conferences. Plus it's cool to have a bunch of new stuff revealed over the course of 3 days.

I don't so much care for E3 as I care for the coverage and excitement surrounding E3. I love listening to the Bomb crew talk over the press conferences/announcements, especially when something amazing or amazingly dumb happens. I also really enjoy seeing everyone on the Internet collectively come together and react to the conferences as well. My friends and I made days out of E3. We would just order some pizzas, hang out, and watch the GB coverage of the big press conferences. It was a great time. So while I don't particularly care about E3 itself, it's fun for me to watch and react with other people.

I think e3 serves a purpose, but it is no longer the purpose it had in 1995.

I think the spectacle is worth the cost. There is something to be said about pageantry and waving the flag of a multi-billion dollar industry. With that said I think the stage shows by Sony, Microsoft, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Bethesda, etc are far more important than the show floor today then they were a decade ago.

It's a fun spectacle, but I've never needed it.

I wouldn't really care, one way or the other, but I also don't think E3 is going anywhere anytime soon.

I don't know that I would be to torn up about it. I've never been nor wanted to go...so I don't have much of an attachment to it. It would be the end of an era of sorts, but not like games as we know it are forever gone. All the stuff they show off new game wise seems to get dished out in mini press conferences (I use the word mini loosely) so we would still get GB talking over press conferences making fun of stuff.

It wouldn't matter to me since I stream the press conferences. I'm sure the big companies would just stream their own press conferences from anywhere like Nintendo Direct and it wouldn't matter.

Exactly. It would't really matter because we would still get the news directly from them or the other conferences would just get bigger. With how the internet gets news so rapidly to people these days I really don't see the point of these big events other then for big retailers, Walmart, GameStop, etc.

This last year was really a sign with me of how little of a deal it was, as a moment of big impact, with how spread out it all was and how much we knew before. It just wasn't a big deal to me at all how it used to be.

I would be disappointed, because some of the best content from Giant Bomb and other sites come out of E3. The hype of E3 is unmatched throughout the year. The actual news coming out of E3 didn't have many HUGE stories last year though.

Honestly, at this point if E3 were to just disappear without a big announcement or anything, I might wonder a few years down the line 'Whatever happened to E3?", but that's about it.

Indifferent at this point, most things get announced before or after E3 and not during.

Whenever I have dipped out of playing games, I always still made sure to watch E3. In theory, although perhaps not as much any more, it provided me everything I needed to talk about games conversationally for the rest of the year. I might not know the details or how well some stuff reviewed - it still always gave me just enough to latch on for discussions.

In general though, I love me a good press conference. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, you name it, I'm setting up a stream on my TV to watch it.