E3 Cancelled?

"It's like they're taking away Christmas. Is that possible?"

Yes, indeed, it seems all too possible. What is sure to be the big tech news story this week, E# is "cancelled." You can read the full story here.

In a nut shell, the ESA (the guys who run E3) simply feel the convention has gotten too big. The money that publishers pay to get they're game shown just isn't giving them enough in return. E3 has gotten "too big."

What will replace E3? At the moment, smaller trade shows around the world, and the Big Three's own gaming shows. And GDC will step up to the plate for a bigger showing, and ultimatly more importance. However, Joystiq predicts that by 2009 or 2010 a new E3 will be in place, just not by the ESA, not called E3, and not in LA.

What does this mean? Well, without E3, May does look a lot more boring. And instead of getting machine gun feed information for three days, we're likly to get small pistol flares throughout the whole year.

I, for one, feel upset about the whole thing. I could see a revisioning of E3, making it smaller and less chaotic, but to do away with the whole thing is just a disservice to the gaming community.

I must add this in here: this is a developing sotry. Stay tuned here for more information as it develops.