Rerun: How E3 Works

There was a power issue as well as an internet issue, and the combination of those meant that my audio file was corrupted and I could not I tried to retrieve it. Trust me, it was not finished when the issue happened, and I wasn't able to retrieve it or recover it. And the same is true for my notes. I was saving directly to the cloud. I did not realize that my Internet connection had dropped out, so I didn't have

a full version of my notes. I had an incomplete version, which meant that I needed to you know, rewrite stuff, so that put me behind schedule and I never want to go without publishing an episode, so in order to tide me over until Wednesday's episode, which will be the hard Drive in Solid State Drive episode. I thought we should listen to a classic episode, and when choosing, I figured a good one would be how E three Works.

This episode originally aired on June twenty nine. Now. E three, for those of you who do not know, is a big trade conference that centers around video games, and of course this year in twenty twenty, they canceled the physical conference fairly early on, uh not not too long after it became clear that COVID was going to be a really big problem, and so there was no physical conference

this year. Instead, companies released information, some around a more virtual E three type schedule, but others kind of did it just on their own, you know, their own timing, And a lot of people have come up with some ideas about whether or not this means E three itself is a thing of the past, if it's ever going to return. I'll talk more about that after the episode airs, but first let's listen to this classic episode, How E three works. E three and its history and its place

in video games. Um, it's something that if you've never been and you only have followed the news that breaks regarding E three, you may not be fully aware of exactly what it's supposed to be. It is a trade show. It typically takes place in Los Angeles, California, although it has taken place in other locations throughout its history, and it's uh like many trade shows, it's really meant for companies to have lots of meetings and conferences, but also

to show off their products. In fact, it's largely become a press oriented event where companies are unveiling big new ideas to try and get a lot of buzz behind them. Sometimes they do it a little too early and you might end up losing momentum by the time something finally comes out. Sometimes the things they announced never come out at all, and I also can become a problem. But I wanted to go through some of the history um

and it's gone through a lot of changes. It first debuted back in nineteen So I'm gonna give a history and evolution of the show, including some of the big things that have happened during particular years. Don't worry, I'm not gonna go through full details of every single year. I'm going to give overviews of a lot of them, but the early years I want to pay special attention to because that was back when E three was kind

of finding its identity. Now, before E three, hardware manufacturers and software companies would show off their stuff at other types of trade shows, one of the big ones being c e S formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Showcase. In fact, the Nintendo Entertainment System debuted at CES back in ve and uh a Natari computer debuted back in the late seventies. Xbox, the original Xbox, debut in two thousand one. That was even after E three was formed.

But the problem with c e S is that it's really big and it covers the entire spectrum of consumer electronics. Video games are just a tiny little spice of that, so they would often be overlooked, and sometimes they'd be put in really inconvenient spots on the show floor. And for a while C e S and the Adult Entertainment

Expo we're running at the same time. There were times where in order to get to the video game section at c e S you'd have to walk through the adult entertainment conference to get there, and a lot of the companies that were working on video game systems and software they didn't take too kindly to that. They didn't like that they were being shoveled off to the side or put in inconvenient locations. So there started to be some discussion among various companies about what they might do

about that. So in some top video game publishers and hardware manufacturers formed a new organization called the Interactive Digital Software Association or i d s A. UH. This would later on evolve into the Entertainment Software Association or e s A. So in heart that association access an advocacy group for video game companies fighting for stuff that isn't

always a benefit to consumers. For example, the e s A has supported SOPA and PIPPA, which are two pieces of legislation that a lot of people opposed, but they also advocate for stuff that consumers appreciate, and one of those things was how can we create an event where we can have our own trade show and we're not overshadowed by other types of technology. So in this association partnered with a company called International Data Group that are known as I d G to create a new trade

show centered in Los Angeles. The event took place from May leventh to mayt at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and the day before the show floor opened, CEOs of some of the biggest game companies held a press conference

to talk about the future of the gaming industry. If you follow the three today, you know that essentially the same thing happens now where companies will hold a huge press event before the show floor opens in order to get as much coverage as possible and excite people and convince them to come to their booth at the show floor and cover their products. And sometimes these events are amazing,

and sometimes they are cringeworthy. You will sit through there and you'll hear some of the worst forced humor, particularly when you have executives who aren't really used to giving a lot of public speeches, and they'll do terrible setups and punchlines. I mean worse than mine, at least with mine. It's a natural delivery. The jokes are bad, but I know how to deliver them. So sometimes you get a great presentation that's really compelling. Sometimes you get a presentation

that's pretty painful to watch. Usually the trailers help, the movie trailers, or rather the video game trailers help. They can move things along, even if the stage production part is a little hard to watch. So what was like? What was that first E three actually like? Well, I wasn't there, but I've read a lot about it. That was a big year in video games. N That was

when um Sega was touting the Sega Saturn. That was their attempt to try and rest the number one spot away from the Nintendo uh, which ultimately actually would fall on Sony's shoulders, not Nintendo are not Sega's shoulders. So Sega had already launched the Saturn in Japan at the tail end of nineteen, but it wasn't scheduled to hitch

store shelves until September two. However, during Sega's press conference, the company surprised the audience by announcing it had shipped the Saturn to a few retailers in the United States, meaning it was available that day for the retail price of three hundred nine dollars four hundred bucks in That is not an insignificant amount of money, but it was a pretty good mic drop moment to say, you know, we thought about scheduling it so it would come out

in September. It's available now. The first Sony PlayStation had also launched in the end of so it was still new on the market in Japan, but it was not yet out in the United States. So in Sony's press conference, they talked about it debuting in the US, and Steve Race of Sony said only one thing during the press conference. Steve Race came out at the press conference, looked at the audience and the only thing Race said was two dollars, and that brought the house down. It was a hundred

dollars cheaper than the Sega alternative. Nintendo, for its part, announced that it's next system, which would become known as the Nintendo sixty four, would be delayed until nine, so they didn't have any hardware to show off. They didn't have an enormous press conference at E three, but they did throw a big party before the show itself. Uh and the company has done some similar things in following

E three throughout the years. In fact, there's some years where Nintendo doesn't really have much of a presence at E three, but will hold its own event just before E three two, kind of piggyback onto everything. Nintendo also had the largest booth on the exhibition floor space in the main hall. The second largest booth belonged to a Claim. Now. One of the things Nintendo showed off was the Virtual Boy. Yes, the virtual Boy, the Migraine making machine that convinced us

that virtual reality was a long long way away. And it also shows how unreliable my memory is. I always associate the Virtual Boy as something that came out earlier before, like in the late nineteen eighties. My associate with my childhood, but actually I was I was older than that when it came out. Maybe it was just a child at heart. At any rate, the Virtual Boy was a big push from Nintendo, and obviously that did not work out so

well for them. Meanwhile, you had a Claim that was showing off licensed games like Judge Dread and Batman Forever. But those games were not terribly great. They didn't look great. It was it was clear that a claim was not incredibly sure that this was alone going to pull people into their booths. So they did something pretty innovative. You know, keep in mind this is the first E three. So

what does a claim do for their booth. They get hold of the motorcycle from Judge Dread and the batmobile in Batman Forever and put both of those in their booth. And they also hired a ton of models, uh young ladies where ring revealing clothing to entice people into their booth. So even at the very first E three there were booth babes uh, which is not a great, you know label, but that is what people tend to refer to, you know, the ladies who have been hired to bring people into

the booth. Um. Also, at that time, the three d O was still around. The three d O famously one of the entertainment systems that never really got a good foothold in the gaming industry, but it was still around at that point, so get's the gecko was there. Three d O also decided to get some ladies to try and bring people into their booth. In that case, three d O went with the San Diego Chargers cheerleading squad, so subtle. Also Neo g O c D debut that

was from s N. K Uh. One of the people in attendance a celebrity this is really classy, John Wayne Bobbitt. He was famous for um well, there's no reason to go into it on this show, but he was there, and he was promoting a company that created interactive porn software, so a very unsettling kind of thing for some of the other companies. They weren't so sure that they wanted to have this kind of entertainment included with video games.

So they actually designed the show floor so there was a bordered off section away from general traffic, so that it wasn't just incorporated directly into the exhibition hall with everybody else. Seka had the biggest booth at the South Hall. Sony also had a very large booth. Sony's was particularly flashy and expensive. Sony threw a big party, and the biggest news about Sony's party was about someone who attended

the party just to play games, my Chael Jackson. H And at that time, Atari was starting to fade from the home console market. The Jaguar had underperformed in the market, and so the company only had a small booth at E three. And if you're wondering what sort of big games were shown off in that year, in they included classics like Twisted Metal and Mortal Kombat three. Uh. The

next year in E three was a different story. First of all, Sega Saturn had completely flopped in the market, and Nintendo's Virtual Boy also was a failure, so both of those companies were nursing their wounds. In nine, Sony PlayStation was actually starting to gain some traction and become competitive in in Nintendo's space. It hadn't overtaken Nintendo yet, but it was on its way, and no one was really sure at the video game industry was doing well

or not. There were a lot of fears that with all the different video game systems of the market from all the different companies, that the industry was heading toward another console crash, like the video game Crash of Night three. So Nintendo that year announced the in sixty four at the show. Remember the previous year they had to delay it, So they announced the in sixty four. They're saying it would cost two fifty dollars. They also showed off Super

Mario sixty four and that got a great response. When people saw that Mario could move and three dimensions, it blew everyone's mind, which is kind of funny to think about now, but at the time it was huge. Nintendo also announced a game that's widely considered one of the best of all time, Golden I, which is based off the James Bond film. Now, they just sort of announced it and showed a little bit of concept art and stuff like that. They didn't really go into much detail.

That would come later the next year. They also showed off a slim down game Boy called the game Boy Pocket, and at the Nintendo party they had circud the sole a performer is performing stunts and walking on stilts and stuff, which was a little weird from what I understand. Again, I wasn't there this one either. We'll be back with more about E three and just a moment, but first

let's take a quick break. Sony announced that the PlayStation would drop in price to a Now this was controversial because the various presidents of the companies had kind of come to an understanding that no one was going to go to the press event and drop a bombshell that would adversely affect the other companies. So why did Sony come out and say the PlayStation was going to drop to bucks. Well, this is because the person who was in charge of Sony at that time was newly in

charge of Sony's video game market. So his excuse was, hey, that was an agreement that my predecessor made. I never made that agreement. So Sony says, hey, we're gonna drop the price to that kind of put the pressure on Nintendo and Sega, both of which would at the same event announced that their new consoles would come down to UM So that was that was a big deal. That put a lot of pressure on those companies. That was also the year Microsoft first showed up to E three

N but it wasn't too promote a console idea. It was to pitch Windows as a gaming platform. Now, that might blow your mind that in ninet Microsoft is saying, hey, let's have more developers create video games for Windows. But at that time there were a lot of games that were still based on or using DOSS as the operating system of choice. So, uh, this was an uphill battle,

or at least it seemed that way for Microsoft. It turned out that before too long it would be impossible for you to find a game that would run on DOSS. You had to get a Windows installation on your PC if you wanted to play games, because all the games were made for Windows. I remember at the time I was particularly perturbed by this because I was a Doss boy. E three changed venues. It actually went to the Georgia Dome in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Didn't get to

go to this one either. At the time, in ninety seven, I was not working at How Stuff Works, so I was not in the technology field. I would have loved to have attended, but I wasn't qualified. Uh. E three I should have mentioned earlier is an industry only event. It's only been open to the public a couple of times and um. Otherwise you have to be either in the video game industry or in journalism specifically covering video games.

Otherwise you are not supposed to go. A lot of people end up getting passes to go for various in various ways, like maybe they work in marketing, maybe they work for a video game retailer, like a retail store. But in general, you're not supposed to just have anybody show up to these things. They have to have some the credentials required to get in so Georgia Dome. The trade show held some conferences, some actual panel discussions, not

just press events and game demos. They actually held discussions about emerging trends and video games, including a strange new world of online gaming, something that was relatively young in Also, there was a type of video game that was really

starting to get incredibly popular, first person shooters. They had been around for a few years several years actually, um since Wolfenstein three D came out in the early nineties, but they were starting to get some real action, and so there were conferences held about first person shooters, particularly for the consoles. So why did the company show off? Nintendo showed off Golden Eye Double O seven. This time they showed a much more detailed demo, and that really

impressed the E three audience. The four players split screen approach was a big innovation for console games. Nintendo also showed off a cute game called Conquers Quest about a fluffy squirrel, and it was meant for kids, and this game would never come out, but it would mutate into a totally different, crude and appropriate game called Conquers Bad for a Day. More on that in a little bit.

That same year, Sony announced Metal Gear Solid, which was technically a sequel to Metal Gear and Metal Gear two Solid Snake. Metal Gear Solid would become the foundation for an extremely popular franchise that um, as far as we know, has concluded since the creator has left the company that was publishing these But that's a that's a story for

a different day. That would be an entire podcast all on its own, and in retrospect, many people felt that the thirty three was kind of a letdown after the first two and that the Georgia Dome was probably not the best venue for the event. Uh that it just made the event to spread out too difficult to navigate, and it just wasn't ideal for showing off these games and the companies. And another black mark for this E three this was the E three where Duke Nukem Forever

was first announced. Now that game would become synonymous with the term vapor ware, and eventually Duke Nukem Forever would emerge out of development hell in two thousand eleven. So announced in but it wouldn't be until two thousand eleven that it comes out, more than a decade later, and the response at the time was pretty negative. People were not impressed, especially considering that the game was spending more

than ten years in development. So it would be really crazy for me to go into this level of detail for every single year, for every E three, so I'm not going to do that. I'm now going to kind of give you just some highlights of each year moving forward. Um, and if you want to learn more about any given E three, I can always do a full episode about specific year if there's something that you think is particularly interesting. But for now, let's look at some of the highlights.

So in n E three was still in Atlanta, had grown into a pretty major trade show with something like seventy thousand attendees, and companies were going all out. They were getting some some big name bands to play their parties like in ninety eight and included the Food Fighters, UH and the B fifty twos at industry parties, and again I'm very sad that I wasn't able to go in. Sega ended up showing off the Dreamcast, which was, in

my opinion, one of the rate consoles of that era. Sadly, I don't think Sega ever had a good idea of how to market it, how to leverage it, so despite the fact that it was a legitimately good contender in the console space, it never really got the the market support and needed to be a real competitor against Nintendo

and Sony. Also shown in ninety eight was an early version of a little game called Half Life, and it is an ongoing joke in video game journalism about whether or not Valve will announce Half Life three at the

next E three um. Half Life is one of those games where people have been waiting for the conclusion of the story for quite some time, and there has been no word on if Half Life three is in development, and even if it is, you know when would it possibly come out, But there's no word on an even existing period, so it remains one of the uh the the snipes that were hunting in video game journalism circles.

Also at Nintendo showed off a game that was the legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, one of the um highly highly critically claimed Zelda games that came out in that time that in uh the Mask one was in Major's Mask. I think, so that's the next one. But oh Green of Time, that was a game that I also had um and a lot of people thought that that was sort of the right direction for Nintendo to

move in. E three came back to Los Angeles, so it leaves Atlantic goes back to l a uh Sega announces that the Dreamcast launch date will be nine nine, so September, and we'll retail for one dollars, so it's pretty cute. Nintend Know held a press conference that unveiled Project Dolphin. Project Dolphin would eventually become the GameCube. They also showed off Donkey Kong sixty four, another game that

was on display was Quake three. Final Fantasy eight was also shown off that year, So some big names in computer and video games in two thousand there were. It was pretty much a game heavy year. Um The PlayStation two was announced by Sony. It had already launched in Japan, so announced rather for the US shelves because the game system had already been out in Japan for quite some time. But among the games that were announced were Metal Gear

Solid two Conquers Bad for a Day. So, now that Conqueror game that was originally meant for kids was definitely not meant for kids. It had lots of crude humor, a lot of cursing, uh, scatological humor, sexual humor, a lot of violence. I mean, the violence in that game is pretty incredible, even though the characters are very cartoony. Um So, Conqueror's Bad for a Day was kind of shocking because it was so out of character for Nintendo.

Um and, and it marks something people were wondering if Nintendo was actually going to make a bigger move into that realm of video games. Actually it did not. For the most part. Some third party Nintendo games get pretty violent, but most of the first party stuff doesn't. Also, that year, the game C Man was shown off, and C Man is one of the weirdest games I've ever seen, And again I could do a full show about that, but if you ever are curious, you can search for its C Man s E A M. A N fish with

a human face. Nothing nothing wrong about that anyway. This was a more subdued E three, and partly because it was held the same year as the Columbine shooting in the United States, the high school shooting, so there was a very different kind of atmosphere at this E three. The video game industry in general was under a lot of scrutiny at Washington, d C. So it was a difficult year for many reasons. In two thousand one, Microsoft joins the game for real, this time talking about the Xbox,

but they didn't debut the Xbox at E three. They had already shown it off at C E S. Still, they brought it to E three to kind of enter the fray along with Sony and Nintendo and kind of Sega. People were still talking about Metal Gear Solid two, which had been shown off the previous year but still hadn't come out. A little game called Grand Theft Auto three was shown off in two thousand one. But here's the weird thing. No one really paid attention to it at

the time. No one thought it was going to be a big deal. It was mostly overlooked. Nintendo was pushing the GameCube pretty hard, but it was still delayed. It had not yet launched, and Sega pretty much got out

of the hardware game that year. Two thousand two, the biggest game on the show floor was Doom three, and that was only in an early demo build, but the game caused shockwaves throughout the show floor, and the reason was because the game engine and the graphics engine were so advanced compared to other games that they really caught

people's attention. There were a lot of effects that you didn't typically see in games at that time, like reflections um so reflective surfaces were showing effective reflections, also destructible environments. This was stuff that had not really been shown in games, at least not many games up to this point, and it really got a lot of people's attention. Meanwhile, you had some interesting drama going on at the exhibition show floor.

EA and Vivendi were fighting each other, Lord of the Rings and Hobbit Style, and I really do mean that, so e A was showing The Two Towers preview over and over again. Uh, because this was the year The Two Towers was going to come out. And then Vivendi was showing off footage from its Lord of the Rings and Hobbit inspired games inside a domed theater and projecting it on the top of the dome. So you have these two companies kind of Lord of the Rings fighting

each other in a snarky way. Uh. The Army, the U. S. Army, was actually at E three that year, showing off a recruitment tool they had developed called America's Army. And if that sounds familiar to you, you are probably a fan of a certain zombie game. There have been a few mods of America's Army, and uh some of them have been pretty famous, and including some that are more famous than America's Army. But this was the year America's Army showed up. Was two thousand two. Also, Battlefield was a

big hit that year. In two thousand three, Half Life two became the big news, so Doom three the previous year. Half Life two steals the show in two thousand three and sets the stage for people to ask where is Half Life three for the next decade, more than a decade. Uh. Microsoft also got really good buzz because they showed off

a preview for Halo two. I remember distinctly watching videos of the Halo two reveal and hearing the audience go totally bonkers, just like you could tell people are getting chills, and it makes you if you're if you haven't been to any three and seeing one of these demos, it might be hard to imagine how such a thing could get a reaction, but it really is contagious. When people are getting excited, it's easy to also feel excited as a special kind of experience. But yeah, Halo two made

a big, make a big splash. Doom three had not yet come out, so it was being pretty quiet about Doom three for the most part. In two thousand three, since it had not yet debuted. Sony, however, announced new hardware, a PlayStation portable also known as the PSP, and that kind of gave Nintendo a bit of a scare because Nintendo had their game Boy platform and now there was a new platform coming into play. Nokia also was there.

The phone manufacturer was showing off a handheld device called the Engage, which failed to excite the crowd and ultimately became kind of a joke in video game circles. Sadly, in two thousand four, the PSP was not yet playable. They showed it off at the show floor, but every PSP unit was tethered there's the PlayStation portable. In other words, it was tethered to a pedestal, and it wasn't showing a playable game, but rather just a looping video, so

that got a lot of people disappointed. They did show off the PSP working in hands off demos where a Sony representative was showing it off, but they didn't let attendees try it out. Nintendo that year unveiled the DS Portable System that's their dual screen system. Uh and some of the games that people got excited about that were shown that year included God of War at the start

of another franchise, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. This time, the Grand Theft Auto game got a lot more attention and the SIMS to In two thousand and five, it was a huge E three. That's when we started seeing the next generation of consoles debut. Microsoft unveiled the Xbox three sixty, Sony unveiled the PlayStation three, and Nintendo showed off The Revolution, which would later become the Wii, and people began to complain about why, like why would you

change Revolution to we Come On? But they did. Big games that year included The Witcher, Alan Wake, the Elder, Scroll Scrolls for Oblivion, Quake for Civilization, for Battlefield, to Fear Spore. So not all of those games necessarily lived up to the hype of E three. Again, not something that you should find particularly surprising. This happens every year, but it gives you an idea like, these were the games that got people buzzing at E three that year,

and not all of them paid off. Two thousand six was not a huge year. Sadly, two thousand six didn't have as big an impact as two thousand five, partly because two thousand five that's when they had all the big hardware announcements, so this was more about games and less about hardware. But some of those games included some real classics like BioShock and Assassin's creed Man Effect. Those

are big names in video games and computer games. Also, Metroid Prime three and We Sports were shown off that year, so it was a good year for games, but not one that unveiled a lot of hardware. Typically, I find that any three where there's not a new hardware announcement feels like a little bit of a letdown among the crowd. At least that's been my experience when I have ATTENDITY three any E three have been to where they didn't talk new hardware. People seem like I was really hoping

to be surprised by something. Yeah, sometimes it just doesn't happen. We've got a bit more to say about E three, but before we get to that, let's take another quick break. In two thousand seventy three shifted big time. So you may have heard about how E three went through this transformation like it was a big party getting more and

more out of control year over year. You had stories about booth babes and ridiculous parties with huge amounts of money being spent on bands and dancers and um open bars, and just that it was becoming a party atmosphere to the point where it was starting some people were feeling that I I was starting to harm the reputation of the video game industry overall. In two thousand seven, E three underwent an enormous change. It also had to do with decline and video game sales in some areas, so it

downsized dramatically. First of all, the three moved to Santa Monica, not Los Angeles, and it was no longer held at a central location. Instead, companies held their own press events and various locations around Santa Monica, and attendance dropped. It was at about sixty thousand and two thousand six it moved down to ten thousand, and that was partly in response to criticism of how E three was really becoming this out of control party instead of a serious trade show.

So there was some worry that this shift to a more serious E three would eventually kill E three itself, and there was a you know, there were a lot of other rules in place, like you weren't supposed to have booth babes. You weren't supposed to have these super out of uh control booths with lots of set design. It was supposed to be much more utilitarian. Moving over to two thousand eight, the E three conference goes back

to the l A Convention Center. That year, Microsoft makes the move to turn its console into a fully fledged home entertainment system. So now the three sixty has a new Live component that's been completely retooled. UM Xbox Live became a real powerful part of Microsoft strategy, and Microsoft even added support for stuff like Netflix starting in two

thousand eight. This was back when Netflix was using its strate g of getting on every platform it possibly could in an attempt to make it a universally accessible app. But it also helped Microsoft at the time to kind of shift from being just a video game console too more of an entertainment system. Uh. That ended up being a difficult story for Microsoft to tell because at E three,

generally speaking, your audience just once the video games. They don't necessarily want you know, Oh, I don't really care if my console also can show movies or access the Internet. I want to know about the games. So it's been a kind of a difficult thing because there they're certainly portions of the console market out there that is incredibly

interested in the entertainment system parts of the various current consoles. Uh. And so maybe E three is one of those things where you just concentrate on the games and then other events you talk about the non gaming related capabilities of the console. Lots of games were on display in two thousand eight, including God of War, three, Kill Zone two, Prince of Persia, Dragon Age, and Fallout three, one of

the best games of all time in my opinion. There were rumors that that would be the final E three. People were wondering if, in fact the whole conference was just going to collapse in on itself. But then came two thousand nine and it totally wasn't the last E three. They had another one, and I got to go to this one. I actually attended the three. In two thousand nine, UM Microsoft showed off Project Natal, which would later become the Connect sensor. Sony showed off its own motion control system,

which would eventually become the Move Controller system. People were arguing that this was in response to Nintendo We, which had already introduced motion controls and got a lot of attention. The Wei was incredibly successful early on. I'm partly because it appealed to people who weren't UM traditionally referred to as like hardcore gamers. I personally hate the term hardcore

gamer and I hate the term casual gamer. But essentially, the We appealed to a broader range of people than the other consoles did, so in part, the Connect and the Move were strategies to try and create a more um appealing approach to a broader audience, although you could

argue how effective or not effective they were. Some of the games announced include Left for Dead Too, which wasn't really shown off but was talked about, Crackdown to Halo O d s T fours A three, The Beatles Rock Band was shown off their Star Wars The Old Republic was shown off there. I ran into Jack Pottilo and Jeff Ramsey at the two thousand nine E three while in line for a demonstration of the Beatles Rock Band. I remember that Nice Guys by the Way and Connect

officially debuted, and so did PlayStation Move. There are tons of games announced in two but I'm not going to go through them because they were almost all sequels. Uh. You've heard a lot of sequels already in this and that's another issue is that you have video game companies that are on the one hand, introducing new intellectual property is a good idea because people start getting fed up with sequels and there's always the opportunity to create a

new franchise out of brand new intellectual property. On the other hand, the games that have already been established have audiences already so it's easier to or at least in theory, it's easier to please that audience by coming out with a new iteration of that or a new sequel to That's that franchise, but was pretty much franchise heavy, or

rather sequel heavy, so I skipped it. That's when Nintendo shows off the Wii U. This, of course, is the game system that has the controller with a game pad in the middle of one of the controllers, and it allows for different types of gameplay, including using the game pad is like a site for a gun in a game, or a scanner, or sometimes you could do like a one gamer versus four gamer kind of thing with one person on the game pad controller and the other people

using the regular we controllers. Uh, it didn't really capture the imagination of the crowd the way Nintendo had hoped. Sony would unveil the PlayStation Vina in Microsoft didn't have any a new hardware, but it did unveil Halo four, which got people excited. Um Uncharted three and the tumb Ray to reboot both got a good response and are

both very similar to one another. If you played Uncharted three and tumb Ray or it's I like to think of them as I think I've unturned three as the game called, and then I climbed, and then tumb rater, I think it was the game, and then I fell down. So but maybe that's just me being snarky. It probably is. I'm an old man. BioShock Infinite was unveiled, which had an amazing art style and uh concept behind it. You can argue whether or not BioShock Infinite ultimately lived up

to its potential. I think it was pretty good. Um, I really enjoyed the game. They also showed off sky Rim again, another game that I loved. It took me a long time to complete it because I enjoyed playing it, but I wasn't too concerned about actually fulfilling the story. Mass Effect three also showing off in two thousand eleven, another game that both got people excited and ultimately got a lot of people angry when they when they finished

Mass Effect three. Two thousand twelve not a hardware year, but definitely a big game year. Watchdogs was shown off, although it would be delayed. It would be shown off again, but it wouldn't come out until far Cry three was shown off at Assassin's Creed three Last of Us one of the best games ever. I'm not a PlayStation fan in general. I'm an Xbox player primarily. However, I do have a PS three and The Last of Us is one of the best games I played on any platform.

Resident Evil six was shown off. Dead Space three was shown off, but again not a real hardware year in two thousand thirteen. That was the year of the Xbox One in the PS four, so a huge hardware year, and there were big press events all around these two new consoles. Nintendo hung in there with the Wi You,

but again was not getting a lot of attention. Big games that were announced store on display that year included Assassin's Creed four Black Flag, another game that I really enjoyed, although I think it's particularly it's a little repetitive, but so are all the Assassin's Creed games. UH, Diablo three Destiny was shown off Halo five, which was a big

deal that Destiny and Halo five were being shown off. Bungee, of course, was the company that had designed or had come had built the Halo games originally but had moved on to work on Destiny UH and then um Microsoft was essentially the steward of the Halo franchise at that point. Elder Scrolls Online was shown off, which I got to try and I thought was interesting, but ultimately never purchased, And it seems like I was not the only one. Kingdom Hearts three was unveiled, Mad Max was shown off.

It would take a couple of years for that game to go through a couple of redesigns before it would debut. Sint Row Saints Row four rather shown off, Star Wars

battle Front was teased. Quant Break was teased as well, Sunset over Drive was shown off, and two thousand fourteen was another game heavy year, with Alien Isolation, Dead Island to Dragon Age Inquisition, Dragon Age Inquisition rather Grim van Dango Remastered, which I was really excited about because that was one of those Lucas Art schemes that I thought was really really great. It was. I was very happy to see that it was going to come back. Game

of Thrones game from tail Tale was announced. No Man's Sky, which we're still waiting on right now, was shown off

in two thousand fourteen. Also two thousand and fifteen, UM Mortal Kombat X showing off Shadow of More Door showing off Ineen two thousand fifteen more games like Assassin Screed, Syndicate, Dark Souls three d Oh Sex Mankind Divided, Fallout four, which was announced at Bethesda's first ever press conference, along with Fallout Shelter, the division dishonored to was shown off a little bit or announced cup Head Gears of War four. I Am Bred. I Am Bred, one of the most

important games made in the last decade. Mass Effect Andromeda was teased. Overwatch was first shown off. I am currently playing Overwatch badly, So if you see me on Xbox Live, John B. Strickland is my gamer tag, and you will see me fail miserably repeatedly. And Overwatch. They also showed off Uncharted four and Until Dawn, which I thought was a pretty interesting idea for a game that brings us

up to this year. And I realized I've just been rattling off video games, and if you're not interested in video games, I know that this has been a trial to listen to, and I apologize for that. But it was one of those things where it's kind of interesting to look back over E three and here are some of these big names being mentioned years before they ever came out due to delays, or maybe there were problems in production that weren't anticipated. I guess that technically that

still falls under the term delay. I didn't list all the games because there could have been quite a few of games that just never came out or haven't come out yet at any rate. But twenty sixteen, let's let's clear it up. Let's take it on home. Microsoft had a big press conference where they showed off the Xbox one s also known as the Xbox One Slim, which is supposedly smaller than the current Xbox Um Plus. They showed off a new wireless controller, so we got some

new hardware this year. They also demonstrated a cross platform program that would allow gamers to play the same games on Windows ten or on an Xbox one. Sony meanwhile announced that in October it would release the ps VR. That's the Sony VR headset what used to be called Project Morpheus. So it comes out later this year in October.

Probably one of the VR headsets that will have a decent chance at some early success, because there are a lot of people who already own a PS four, so purchasing a headset, which I think is going to be three dollars if I'm not mistaken. I don't have the number in front of me, but people who want to buy it, they already have a p S four that

it will run on. Whereas some of the other VR headsets which have been a big, big deal in this past e three, like the HTC Vibe and the Oculus Rift, if you don't have a pretty strong computer system, a good gaming rig, then the purchase price of the HTC Vibe and the Oculus Rift is just the beginning. You have to go out and purchase a computer too. And so the HTC Vibe is eight hundred bucks, the Oculus

Rift is six hundred. The computer you would need to run either of those and a really decent performance setting would be about dollars. So you're looking at more than two thousand dollars in the case of HTC Vive to have a system, and that's before you talk about any games.

That's just so that you have the hardware. So I think Sony's ps VR is positioned in a way where it could see more success than some of the alternatives, even though you could also argue that being tied to a console means that you have a ceiling for as as good as it can get, because with PCs, you can always upgrade, or you can buy a brand new machine that is compatible with your your hardware and continue to push the limits of what that hardware can do

with a PS four unless you purchase a brand new PS four that has improved specs, and that may or may not happen. You've got a ceiling for as good as it's going to get, it will just be at the top of the performance of the console, and then that's as far as you will go. So there were a lot of VR titles shown at this year's E three, including Star Trek Bridge Crew, which I think is brilliant. I would love to try that out. But there are other some There are some other big titles, not just

VR titles, but titles in general. Uh. Nintendo showed off the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild for a while, we were told that that was gonna be the only thing Nintendo showed. They also showed some Pokemon, but a lot of people were impressed by the Legend of Zelda trailer. Other games included Mafia three and Resident Evil seven, Titan Fall two, Watchdogs Too, and lots lots more so. Going to one of these events can be fun and exhilarating,

it's also exhausting. It's crowded. Uh. Typically, if you are not someone who's exhibiting or have special access to the show floor before it opens, your experience tends to be waiting in line, first, waiting in line for the show floor to open. Then the show floor opens and there's an initial rush into the show floor as everyone tries to get to specific places, and then waiting in line some more so you can get your turn trying out

the latest video game system. And it's it could be frustrating because you usually only get to play for a couple of minutes, because the whole point of the demos just to give you a feel for the way the title works. So it's not um It's not the ideal way I would say to experience a first impression of a video game, unless you happen to be connected to a large outlet where they're bringing the games to you, in which case, you know, you get to sit back

and have more time and less frustration to enjoy the experience. However, you do get a chance to see these things first hand, and and there's something special about that. There's no denying that. I should also say I have never attended one of the E three's where people got a free cons owl or a free game. I've never been some of the press conferences. Occasionally you'll hear, hey, everyone here gets a voucher for a brand new Xbox. No, I've never been

to one of those. I have every year I have gone. The announcements have been interesting, but I didn't walk away with hundreds of dollars worth of swag. That's not so much a complaint. It's just me kind of thinking about my lousy timing. Ah, But that's not the reason that people should go. People should go because they're trying to cover the industry anyway. That's the E three story so far. The the conference is pretty much returned to the old

party crazy sort of approach. Maybe the parties aren't quite as over the top as they used to be, but the show floor does still have some pretty impressive booths, usually with some amazing setting where you know you'll you'll go in and they've redone the booth so that it looks like you're walking into one of the games, or you might see like a life sized mech statue that you can get into and get a photo of yourself.

In it or that kind of stuff. Um, so it definitely has returned to the more showy version that it was when it first started. There's still some people who are asking whether or not E three is valid, if it's a if it's something that would that should continue, or perhaps company should hold their own press events at

a time of year that is beneficial to them. In other words, go the Apple approach instead of being part of a big trade show like E three, Go do your own thing, and that way you're not sharing the stage with all the other companies. I haven't heard any rumors about E three going away, and I don't expect it will go away in the short term, but perhaps

we'll see a difference moving ahead. I think in the realm of VR, assuming VR is successful, E three still has a very valuable place because as somewhere that people can go and get that VR experience and then report

on what that experience is like. Uh, It's it's harder to do that at individual press events, but at a big thing like e er, where you're going to find a lot of different companies working with VR headsets like HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift or one of the dozen other ones that are out there on the market, you're more likely to be able to encounter that, experience it, and then communicated to other people. And that wraps up

the story about how E three works. Now, there's a lot of stuff that I didn't really cover, some of which wasn't public knowledge in when I first recorded this episode. There have been numerous reports of disagreements at very levels of management within E three, or rather the organization that throws E three. Uh. There have been a lot of

allegations of, if not misbehavior, at least poor judgment. UH. There's been a lot of debate about whether or not opening E three up to the public has done more harm than good, if it has impeded journalists and industry professionals from actually doing their job since it is supposed to be a trade show. There's been talk about how the big companies have gradually sort of distanced themselves from

E three, Sony and Nintendo among them. UH. There's been talk about how E three may not come back because the this COVID issue was the nail in the coffin, as it were, and that more and more companies are finding it possible to reach out to gamers, to the media directly, as opposed to getting together to do it in a conference. The whole purpose of E three originally was to elevate the platform of video games, to let more people know what was going on, because otherwise it

was just getting swallowed up in tech. But the video game industry is drastically different today than what it was when E three was first started, so you could argue that E three no longer really has at least the same place as it did when it launched. Perhaps it still has a place, but it has definitely evolved over the years. I think if we were to lose E three, the biggest con of that, the biggest downside is that that would disproportionately affect independent studios that largely depend on

events like E three to gain visibility. These are studios that are producing titles that don't have the develop mint dollars or the marketing budget of the big Triple A titles.

You're not going to get the same treatment of one of these quirky little titles that could be legit a fantastic game, maybe even Game of the year material, but you're never gonna get the same level of coverage that's ay a sky Rim or a fallout, both of which are from the same company, or a you know, a grand theft auto or or a big ticket title that ties into like a major movie or a movie franchise.

You're just not going to get that same level of of attention unless you are part of a larger event, especially if you can get kind of taken under the wing of one of the really big companies like Microsoft or Sony. But that's really the biggest downside I can see, because otherwise the event has I think outlived its usefulness for a lot of the various players pun intended who

are involved with the video game industry. Certainly as a member of the media, I found it much more difficult to cover the event in more recent years than I did when I first went. UM. I'm sure that people in the industry also find it challenging, especially once the general public is allowed onto the show floor. It just becomes a crazy, busy, chaotic environment, and it's very hard to just get from point A to point B, let

alone cover video games. So I don't know if E three is gone for good or if we'll see you know, more virtual events moving forward. I think it would be a shame for it to go completely. I do think that if it is going to exist as a semi public event, things need to change fairly dramatically in the way that things work on the floor in order for

it to be a less frustrating experience. I know that there were people who attended past e three's when the public was allowed, who would wait, sometimes up towards of maybe three or four hours to get just maybe ten or fifteen minutes of playtime with a game title. And I can't imagine that they walked away from that feeling

that it was money well spent. If you walk out of the convention hall at the end of the afternoon and you say, I played, you know, total forty five minutes worth of games and I waited for the rest of that time, I'm not sure you're gonna feel like that was the best use of your time and money. So I do think that if it is to continue, they need to overhaul the entire experience in order to make it one that is beneficial for all parties. It

doesn't do anyone any favors. If you walk out of the convention and you are miserable or angry, or you feel like you you wasted your money. That isn't doing the developers any favors. It's not doing the gamers any favors. So if it is to continue to exist, assuming we get to a world where such a thing can happen, I think it does need to have a major overaul. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed that classic episode. I promised

the new episode will go live on Wednesday. It will be how hard drives and solid state drives work, or something similar along those lines, and hopefully by that point I will have sussed out all of the issues with my computer system and my internet because I do not want that to happen again. You might have felt a disturbance in the force when that happened, as if a podcaster cried out in pain and anguish and then was

suddenly silenced because his internet cut out. Anyway, if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of Tech Stuff, please get in touch with me. Let me know what those are, whether it's a technology, a company, a personality in tech, maybe just a trend in tech. Let me know. You can each out on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y text Stuff is an

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