By Zaid at Monday, December 08, 2014 10:29:00 AM





The weekend starting Friday the 5th of December through to Sunday the 7th of December has been a surprisingly eventful and newsworthy weekend in gaming. Normally when we get to this time of year new game announcements, and gaming news generally, is quite thin on the ground. Typically we'd be busying ourselves with 'Best of' lists. Instead, we're talking about Uncharted 4, Street Fighter V and No Man's Sky.









New Game+

Discussion of new, up and coming games isn't really a December tradition in gaming, but thanks to Sony's immensely successful PlayStation Experience, the news cycle is jammed to the gills with fresh video game stories. For Sony, this couldn't have gone better. All anyone is talking about is their PlayStation 4 and all the amazing new games that are coming to it.



By hosting the Experience, Sony has basically ensured for themselves millions of dollars in free coverage in the lead up to Christmas. It's the best possible scenario for them; everyone is talking about their console and no one is talking about Microsoft's. So given that success, I can guarantee that there will be an Xbox Experience, or similar, in the not too distant future.



Taking that as a given, it will mean we'll have the PlayStation Experience, Nintendo Direct and an as yet unnamed Xbox event, which kind of makes an event like E3 unnecessary.





Uncharted Territory

E3 has been the centerpiece of the video game news cycle almost since its inception. The new games are debuted there, the new consoles get shown off there, the new announcements are, er, announced there. For gamers, this is fantastic, because we get see all the cool new stuff all at once, but for individual publishers it can be problematic.



We always talk about who 'won' E3 and you can bet that Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and the other publishers talk about that as well. But in this new scenario, the pressure of 'winning' doesn't exist and there's no need to worry about the other guy tripping you up and stealing the news coverage.



Which is the real problem from a publisher perspective as far as E3 is concerned. You have to share it with the competition. This way, you get to control everything and there's zero risk of someone else spoiling it for you. Crucially, the timing is also fortuitous. It's the gift giving season and in video game terms, the only video games people are talking about right now are PlayStation video games. It makes so much sense to have an event like this now, as opposed to June/July. 'Why didn't anybody do this before?', seems a most apt phrase.



Given all the benefits you have to wonder why anyone would bother with E3 from now on? It just doesn't make sense to keep going there.









Game Over?

So does this herald the end of E3? In the short term, definitely not. Regardless of the PlayStation Experience's success, E3 is still a massive trade show and that hasn't changed over the space of a weekend. Every other publisher is still going to be there and so long as some important publishers do show up, others will feel they need to be there too.



Long-term, it's less clear. If over the next few years publisher see a better PR outcome for themselves by taking the Experience route, then that's what they will do. But the PlayStation Experience does mean the death of E3, then it will be a slow death. Assuming the worst case scenario, we'll see publishers retreat one by one from E3, until it degrades into irrelevance. Is that a likely eventuality? It's too early to say with any kind of certainty, but it's definitely a more likely scenario today than it ever was just 72 hours ago.



What do you think, is E3 in danger?





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