| Hi everyone, it's Jason. Today we're lamenting the absence of a big video game convention, but first... This week's top gaming news: - Microsoft, which will inherit at least one union when it completes its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, says it's willing to work with labor groups.
- Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down. Although her departure has been expected for a long time, this news comes just a few weeks after a report that years ago Sandberg helped quash negative stories about her boyfriend at the time, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.
- GameStop reported mixed results in the first quarter as it shifts into crypto and NFTs.
Here are three slightly contradictory yet true observations on E3, the once-annual video game trade show that was canceled this year and may never return. -
E3 is an obsolete institution — a relic of an era before livestreams, YouTube clips and other methods that companies can use to show their products directly to fans. -
The organization behind E3 has proven to be incompetent, sometimes in harmful ways, and probably shouldn't be in charge anymore. -
E3's absence has left a gaping hole in the gaming calendar and we will miss it very much this year. Before Covid, June was the most important time of the year for the video game industry. E3 unfolded over two parts: an opening three or four days of press conferences, where the big game publishers showcased their newest titles, and then another three days where journalists and industry professionals hit the show floor, playing games and schmoozing. In 2016, for example, Nintendo Co. spent a chunk of its big presentation showcasing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Attendees could then play a demo of the game for the next three days on the show floor, and soon enough everyone was raving about it to one another. It became clear then that the latest Zelda was going to be something special. Wandering the show floor at the Los Angeles Convention Center was an overwhelming experience, with thumping trailers for games like Battlefield or Assassin's Creed playing on massive screens around every corner. Behind the scenes, publishers would compete over who got the prime shelf spots at Target that year while indie developers struck deals with executives over stringy cafeteria pizza.  Attendees wait in line to play Borderlands 3 by Take-Two during the E3 expo in 2019. Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg For me the best part was always the evenings, where a curious journalist might mosey over to one of the nearby hotel bars, at the J.W. Marriott or Hotel Figueroa, to catch up with old friends, meet new industry professionals and swap gossip that might lead to good stories. Even watching at home was a thrill. The first half of E3 was always full of surprise game reveals and exciting new trailers. During the second half, gaming sites published interviews and observations from the show floor. At night, fans could tune into streams from outlets like Giant Bomb, which set up a couch and invited industry professionals to pop by. This year, something's missing. Rather than preparing for a single intense week, game companies plan to drip-feed announcements throughout the summer. For example, in the past, Sony Group Corp. held a 90-minute E3 presentation full of games from its PlayStation Studios as well as reveals from outside partners. Instead, last night it held a half-hour livestream just for a few third-party developers. It was fun, but nothing quite like E3.  A demonstration of 'Assassin's Creed 3' game is shown at the Sony press conference on the eve of E3 in 2012.Photographer: David McNew/Getty Images North America Industry hype-man Geoff Keighley, best known as the host of the annual Video Game Awards, has created a replacement of sorts called Summer Games Fest. It will open on June 9 with the promise of a "cross-industry showcase." Then, three days later, Microsoft Corp. will keep up the E3 tradition and hold its big annual conference at the same time as usual. But Summer Games Fest won't recreate the in-person element of E3. Nor does it have buy-in from many of the major players. Nintendo, Ubisoft Entertainment SA and Electronic Arts Inc., which would all typically hold their own E3 presentations, are instead working on their own marketing timetables. It's not quite the same. And as we enter the next week, I for one will be missing the experience of watching hours upon hours of canned one-liners and fake trailers, then squishing through masses of convention center attendees en route to an interview or demo. There's really nothing quite like it. I've been messing around with Card Shark, a new indie game from Devolver Digital in which you play a hustler in 18th-century France, using tricks and cheats to separate unwitting opponents from their wallets. Each of these card tricks unfolds through a series of mini-games that ask you to quickly count suits or press buttons in a specific order. They can get a little tedious, but the game is creative and charming, and the writing is a lot of fun. Blizzard's new game Diablo Immortal has received generally good reviews but is also getting slammed for being full of costly microtransactions. The game may be free but it still wants you to pay — a lot. Final Fantasy XVI, the next entry in the long-running role-playing game series from Square Enix Holdings Co., won't be out until next summer. Here's a new look at the game to tide you over until then. The two new Spider-Man games, which were PlayStation exclusives, are coming to PC this year, continuing Sony's trend of releasing its big titles on computers several years after they come to console. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment