E3 Media & Business Summit Review

The guys at Wandering Goblin have published a review of this year’s E3 Media & Business Summit, and it’s nothing short of scathing.

Do big media press people schedule appointments to view games they’ve never heard of, or with companies they’ve never seen before? Is there any chance that some guy from the Washington Post will discover and report on a hot new MMO? Will he even know what an MMO is? Or is he more likely to go with Sony’s announced price cut for their 60GB PS3? Result: many smaller developers, aware of this problem before the show even began, abandoned the E3BM and didn’t even appear. How they’ll generate interest in their game without the old E3 is unknown.

The entire atmosphere lacked anything resembling buzz or excitement. The ambience was dry and dull. It was corporate. People shuffled, or shuttled, slowly between demos by larger corporate game companies. Result: this was about as exciting as an accounting conference. It was like a bunch of CPAs were meeting to discuss changes to tax laws. If this is somehow an ESA strategy to generate any positive sentiment about gaming, we simply don’t get it.

Good to hear that I didn’t miss much.