E3 used to be the hottest week in gaming and in a lot of ways, it still is. The problem is that more and more developers are opting out of conference presentations. EA announced recently that they’d stop giving traditional conference presentations, opting for other, newer ways of announcing content.

Earlier this year, Sony said much of the same and announced they would not present at E3 in favor of their own form of announcements and trailer reveals. The EA news wasn’t surprising. Anthem is falling fast and hard to a level of irredeemability thanks to claims of crashing PS4 consoles and horrible user and critic reviews. I too wouldn’t want to get in front of a crowd right now as a Sony suit.

Sony wasn’t a surprise either. Nintendo has opted for their Treehouse format for a few years now, and overall, it’s been successful. Coupled with Nintendo Direct videos throughout the year, it makes me excited knowing all the big announcements for my favorite gaming company do not come at one time. Sony can’t be blamed for sitting out the presentation side of things, and given their backlash lately, neither can EA. So why does the breakdown of the traditional E3 conference hurt so bad?

In many ways, E3 presentations were as close as you got as an adult to feeling the same excitement you did as a child about, well, anything. Seeing the trailer for Halo 3 in 2007 was unreal. So was the 2010 reveal of the Nintendo 3DS and all the E3 coverage of people testing it out and talking about how, yes, the 3D actually works. That magic isn’t captured in the Treehouse-style announcements. The live energy, or lack thereof in poorer years, gave way to some really fun moments of announcements, reveals, and gameplay demos.

I don’t believe that an E3 conference is beneficial to a company in 2019 because, no matter what, you will be scrutinized. If you drop a video, at least you don’t have to stand on a stage and feel the wrath of a crowd when things do not go your way. It’s safer, more PR friendly, and overall just more in keeping with the way things get announced nowadays. We’ll see if Microsoft, Square Enix, and Bethesda stick with the presentations, but in my eyes, fewer presentations mean less competition, and that could bode well for Xbox and two of the biggest developers in the game.

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