I have to go to Pax Prime every year. It used to be cool, now it's just a giant circle jerk between twitch, youtube and indy developers and it's pretty cringe.
When it was about indy and other smaller games showing cool ideas I liked it. Now it's all about trying to woo some big streamer or uploader into playing your game for you.
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You act like Rockstar was only like this after their success when they've always been like this and proven it works. Nice try. Rockstar has ignored the e3s on the world even way back in the PS2 days. Because they know what they are- a giant waste of money. Shit loads of marketing budgets blown on these events that really only capture the eyes of the core gamers. Of the 65 million people that own GTAV I doubt 10% of them regularly watch trade show streams.
If you really think those 200k viewers for the twitch e3 stream is going to sell a game like word of mouth or advertisements on ESPN during monday night football then you're delusional. They're gigantic waste of money and resources. Don't get me wrong I still enjoy a hype ass e3 conference like Sony 2015, but that shit is just fluff and not make or breaking anything. Shenmue 3 isn't going to magically sell millions of copies because it was on the e3 stage and FFVII Remake would sell millions if they announced and released it on the same day. They're worthless and wasteful in the grand scheme of things.