The truth is the opposite. I went to the first E3 the day before I began my first day at Activision. In those days it was the only game show in North America.

The truth is the opposite. I went to the first E3 the day before I began my first day at Activision. In those days it was the only game show in North America. You could walk in and say hi to the CEO. There weren’t a lot of ways to communicate about your products and your company. Who you really wanted to reach in those days was buyers for stores. The press barely existed. Since then it has gone through so many permutations. You started to care more about the press then the public. Then you started to be able to really promote games online. So is E3 failing because its more effective to promote online then at live events? No. In fact if you have a good budget to promote a game you are going to spend more of it on live events then you did in the old days. The why is complicated, but I would say the main reason is its harder to advertise online then it used to be, press has less influence and you need to have organic interest. So every big publisher has their own live event. And people spend a fortune on PAX, various ComiCons, etc. All of this stuff went online because of COVID but it is coming back bigger. The problem for E3 was that when it started it was the only game in town. Now the business is exponentially bigger and there are many events to choose from. If you have deep pockets or a loyal fan base you can your own event.