Peter Suciu

E3 Shake Up As Activision Pulls Out
May 2, 2008

Will the formerly largest trade show for all things video game survive? That’s bound to be the question being asked right about now. GameDaily has reported that Activision and Vivendi have discontinued their membership with the Entertainment Software Association, and thus will not be presenting at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles.

This is big news considering that the show is making a return to the Los Angeles Convention Center after opting to do a scaled-down affair in Santa Monica last July. The show will remain a low-key business conference with a tightly controlled invite-only list of press getting the chance to attend. But now with Activision and Vivendi breaking ranks we can only assume that this could be the beginning of the end for the show, which made its debut in 1995.

Rumors are circulating that Activision will hold a non-official press conference on the first night of the show instead. This type of non-show exhibiting is pretty much par for the course with large trade shows, and events such as CES are as much dominated by the non-official events as happenings within the show halls. In addition to the big three press conferences — Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony — E3 too had a share of happenings around the city, including press conferences, parties and other minor spectacles, most of which weren’t actually officially tied to the show.

But with scaled back E3 it seems odd that companies such as Activision would go for the non-official events, which could in fact compete with some of the official events!

Of course part of the rationale could be that if enough non-official events spring up the show could draw press that would otherwise not attend, because they were simply not invited. In the past it wasn’t only common for the whole staffs of some gaming magazines and Web sites to attend, it was the way things were done. With the invite only system, E3 was smaller but this meant that often times only a handful of staffers could attend. Activision could be on to resolving some of those issues.

Additionally, it should be noted that Activision was already one of a handful of companies that began the practice of a pre-show editor’s showcase. These events were held at a nearby hotel before the official start of E3 and gave editors a chance to see the game lineup without having to do full booth appointments. Thus for Activision the system worked very well, and apparently the company decided this was a better formula than limiting its presentation to what the ESA was willing to provide.

More importantly, Activision isn’t the only company that won’t be among the exhibitors this year. Blizzard/Sierra, Majesco and NCsoft are among the companies that likely won’t be at the Los Angeles Convention Center in an official capacity, and we’ll have to wait and see if any of these opt for the Activision style treatment.

What makes some of this a bit ironic is that the rumor has been that the larger companies such as Electronic Arts and Activision had threatened to pull of E3 in the past because the show had gotten too large and unmanageable. At its peak, probably as many of the attendees were just fans (and those with dubious at best credentials to be at the show) as actually being a part of the industry, including the working press. The scaled down E3 Business Conference was suppose to resolve this, but it seemed to satisfy few companies and very few of the press.

Now with Activision pulling out of the show the question maybe whether E3 will survive at all. Considering that other events, including GDC have begun to draw away attention, maybe the time has come for E3 to pull the plug.

Posted by Peter Suciu on May 2, 2008 | Comments (0)