T w e n t y S i d e d

In years past, Bethesda and Microsoft had separate shows. But this year Microsoft acquired Bethesda for 7.5 billion. So the two presentations were merged. Great. I already get Pete Hines and Phil Spencer mixed up all the time, and now they’re in the same presentation. Like, I think it took me one or two years of E3 before I realized these were two different guys.

(It’s not that they look all that much alike. They’re just two nondescript dudes of medium build in corporate casual dress that come out and recite boilerplate corporate copy before a series of trailers. They don’t literally look like each other, but they’re sort of generic and forgettable. So when I see the second one, I can’t remember if he matches the face I saw earlier.)

It’s really interesting that they lead off the show with Todd Howard from Bethesda instead of having an Xbox personality show us the latest Halo. Microsoft is evidently very proud of their acquisition. 

Anyway, I’m just going to go through the entire show and comment on everything in order… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2021 Part 2: Xbox (But really Bethesda)”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I realize the pandemic has been horrible, painful, and endlessly annoying, but I really like what it’s done for our premiere videogame trade show. Presentations are so much smoother now that publishers are focusing on the home audience rather than marketing to a crowd of hungover, overworked, jet-lagged journalists who are all fighting for a wi-fi signal in a deafening convention center. 

It’s nice that presenters can get their requisite boilerplate “games are important” prattle out of the way without stopping for applause every ten seconds. The stream remains focused on the trailers I’m trying to watch and doesn’t keep cutting back to a convention hall of attendees that don’t matter to me. I think the presenters feel a little less pressure since they’re not looking out over a sea of faces, which means they’re a little more composed and a lot less wooden. 

Old E3 was designed for a world before social media. A world where you needed to market to journalists, and then those journalists would write magazine articles, and then next month those articles would reach the intended audience. Now the intended audience can view your marketing directly, in real time. 

I hope we keep doing things this way, even when/if we’ve given COVID the shove. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2021 Part 1: Ubisoft’s Cavalcade of Cringe”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.