So now we know E3 hasn't been "cancelled." It's just been pared down into something resembling, well, not E3. I know the jaded insider thing to do is sniff that the big show was too bloated and sugary for it's own good, but the bottom line is E3 was a true event, comparable in sporting terms, to the Super Bowl or World Cup. An event that focused the scattershot attention of the gaming public on one grand, glowing spectacle and gave us something to argue about and pick apart for the rest of the year. No matter, how much more intimate and productive, the "evolved" E3 and it's imitators may be, it will still carry the whiff of an orthodontist's convention compared to the epic scale of expos past. As we contemplate the end of an era, the rabid, booth babe-loving fanboy may look for someone to blame. Obviously, the misgivings about E3's notorious gluttony had been building for some time. The decision slay the beast was no doubt arrived at mutually by an exhausted and weary industry. But if you had to pick one massively influential player with a particular interest in dialing down the festivities, it would have to be Sony -- a company whose costly, bumbling performance at center stage last May must have weighed heavily on execs as they nervously looked to next year's baccanalia. If eras are supposed to end with a bang, Sony's ended with a motion-sensing bust, or rather a strained "Riiiiiiiidge Racer!"
Sony didn't kill E3, but they certainly demonstrated why clumsy corporations might prefer a more sterile, less pressure-packed environment.
