EA Announces Public Pre-E3 Events, Leaves E3 Showfloor

Whoa! That's kinda crazy.

Sure.

That is an interesting move, and yet I'm surprised they haven't done this sooner than now, considering the success of Nintendo's Directs.

Not too surprising.

so how long until E3 is no more?

but they are running a press conference still?

order of their events seems a little backwards

The ESA can't be happy that they go to all the effort and expense of putting on E3 only to have their own members not bother with booths while piggybacking on the attention with their own events.

So is EA becoming the next Konami?

Not muh Maddenz!

Pulling a Nintendo, huh? I won't miss the hour-long Pele interviews, but bowing out of E3 conferences is now officially a trend. Won't be long until Ubisoft realizes how little they get from their live cringefests every year and follows suit. Maybe with a bit more pre-planning, they can create some fresh dank memes already.

Yes they have a Conference but not at E3 it will be their own before E3 pretty much what Bethesda did last year.

@kingloo:

well its their fault for overcharging for booth space. companies like EA pay millions just for the space, and the roi for it is no longer their. maybe the esa should try reducing the price.

Makes sense from their perspective. Large Booth space and setting up conferences are really expensive so a company might as well cut out the middle-man and use all that money the way they best see fit. Looking at Nintendo, it seems like a good idea to market directly to your customers while cutting through all the noise of E3 as best you can.

Well they'll still be putting on a press conference, so I guess for the fans who don't plan on being in either LA or London, this changes nothing.

Makes sense to me. EA is huge, everyone will cover them anyway, so what advantage do they gain by being part of the event proper? I imagine the use-value of E3 as a grass-roots hype machine has lessened now that it's not so much about the general public, so pulling out and running their own ticketless event seems like a no-brainer on the marketing level.

Nintendo still is on the show floor. They just don't have a staged press conference.

So I was supposed to be heading to E3 again this year, but reconsidering it now. With so many companies backing out lately it seems another E3 crash is happening.

@homelessbird: E3 was always about the press/industry, not about the general public.

@hibikirush: With more and more dudes pulling out of E3 proper I wonder what E3 coverage is going to look like in 2016. Like, are all the duders going to go down to LA 3-4 days in advance now to play the upcoming stuff that will no longer be on the show floor?

As long as I see something on Mass Effect, they can do something as simple as a Nintendo Direct for all I care.

A European event? That's pretty cool!

Not that I'll be able to afford to attend it, I'll probably just experience E3 via the internet as usual, but it's a great initiative.

This has been imminent for years. Public E3 events and booths are no longer relevant. Consumers get news from the company directly and industry people make private appointments.

But how will I know how many minutes there are until Star Wars: Battlefront?

Makes sense to space things out a little bit. No point fighting for coverage time with hundreds of other titles and their publishers.

are the rats stating to abandon the sinking E3 ship?

"we're tired of everyone at our event bailing to get good seats for Sony"

As long as I get the ' Giantbomb talking over ...' I don't care where they present it

Does EA even publish enough games any more to fill a booth, let alone a show? Mass Effect and some Star Wars game for sure, but otherwise?

@strabo: EA Sports games usually fill up half the booth every year.

Now is the time for Iron Galaxy to build a big ass booth

Maybe they are trying similar rebranding like nintendo and their emphasis on treehouse. Will be interesting to see how it all plays out

Soon, E3 will take place in a hotel while everyone will have their stuff week before.

And nothing of raw $60 DLC-less value was lost.

Are EA still doing their normal press conference or are they having one of their own, Bethesda-style, at the start of their 3-day EA bonanza? If so, are they only having "old", already announced, games on their floor?

Also, what does this mean for GB's E3 coverage?

It begins. Confirmed, @jeff is a psychic.

yup

really weird feeling

@earthen: Theoretically, yeah. But for a long time it was clearly designed for them anyway. So much so that they deliberately scaled it back not too long ago

E3 lost another E, eh?

*jazzhands*

I wonder if Konami will finally let their booth go this year, they don't even have any trailers to run this time.

So what's going to happen is that large companies will all start having there own things and after a few years attendance will wane because people will start thinking "Man there's too many of these sorts of events. If only there was one centralized event that I only had to pay attention to. That'd be so much easier" and the cycle will begin again.

Will they still have a briefing?

Huh. I'm curious what the future has in store.

@suits: Yup. All I want is "GB Talks Over Whatever the Hell is Happening on this Stage"

Part of the continuing realisation of games companies that they can bypass the games press nowadays and go straight to the people they want. Might see this decentralization from E3 happen with more and more companies over the next few years.

@andrewf87462: They're having a press conference the Sunday before E3, probably similar to what Bethesda did last year.

But they won't have an official E3 conference nor will they have a booth on the show floor.

Pretty crazy decision, but good for them I guess. The question will be will the "EA Play" event be covered in anywhere near as much detail as E3 is. Video game journalists are lazy; they like all their news in one place. I suppose it backends on to E3 so it kind of still is in one place.

Guess Jeff was right about E3?

Cheers for the info. Shame they won't be having a conference at the event but at least there will be something this year. Hopefully with less Pele.

Huh. Konami refused to give up their booth and they're getting out of games. EA is clearly still in games and giving up their booth to run their own show with blackjack and hookers.

Edit: also this slowly starts to feel like we're in the Santa Monica years again where E3 is several hotel rooms all over town