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All the analysts agree: E3 got too big for itself that it eventually collapsed. The E3 Media and Business Summit coming this July and E for All this October are simple spin offs from the normally huge gathering of gamers, media, developers, publishers and even investors, and neither even sound the least bit sizeable anymore.
What forced the Electronic Entertainment Expo to break itself down to two separate events? In the fifth episode of the Bonus Round for GameTrailers TV, Geoff Keighley spoke with Wedbush Morgan's analyst Michael Pachter, IDG World Expo's CEO Mary Dolaher, and Electronic Arts' Director of Corporate Communications Tammy Schachter.
Michael Pachter was a fan of E3 for years. In fact, he probably does miss the booth babes as much as Keighley says he does. Pachter has been through the most recent of the ESA's Consumer Electronics Show spin-off, and particularly noted his aggravation with just how big it had become:
You know, I think that it got out of hand. I liked it a few years ago. It's gotten to the point where all I could do - if I was lucky- was to attend a few press conferences and meet a handful of management, so there was almost no time on the floor.
Although all of the guests had a lot to say, Pachter clearly knew what he was talking about. From a third-person perspective - and because there are still millions of people who haven't stepped into E3 - he pegged that E3's problem was that it wanted to appeal to everybody. And now that it doubled over on itself, those who haven't got in yet will probably never get to in the future. He commented:
I think that the problem that E3 has had is that there were so many constituents they wanted to appeal to. They want to get to the consumer - and then obviously by extension, they want the media to publicize that. They want to get to the financial community - they want their investors to know what they're up to. They want their retailers to know what they're up to, so they're really appealing to all these different kinds of people and it turned into one big event to do that.
And I honestly think that the consumers took over.
So we guess the invite only was the IDG World Expo's knee-jerk reaction to the people who "were literally taking apart booths and stealing signs." Well, at least we know who to blame for missing out on what should've been 2007's biggest gaming event.
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