Xbox, celebrities and live streaming: Three takeaways from the E3 gaming show

Of the announcements that hadn’t leaked out prior to the event, Microsoft’s move to make Xbox 360 games playable on the new Xbox One systems was the biggest and will likely be a boon to system sales for the company. Other major announcements included:

• The oft-rumoured, long-awaited game The Last Guardian is coming to PS4 in 2016.
  
• Activision is making a Skylanders toy that is also a Nintendo Amiibo.
  
• Bethesda Softworks has a free iOS app called Fallout Shelter that the company hopes will generate excitement for its Fallout 4 video game.
  
• Electronic Arts has a new Plants vs. Zombies game and Ubisoft has a sequel to its South Park video game.
  

These announcements were all made in the days before E3 even began during the showcases and briefings that precede the annual trade show. For years, the three hardware manufacturers have held their events at the same time: Microsoft Xbox on Monday morning, Sony PlayStation on Monday evening, and Nintendo on Tuesday morning, just before E3 proper opened the doors.

As the industry has grown, major game publishers started filling in the spaces between, eager for the opportunity to own the fickle attention of gamers, for at least an hour or two. They put developers on stage to show off the games they are making and sometimes trot out a celebrity or two to stand out from the crowd.

For EA, it’s often athletes. On Monday, Pele joined David Rutter, who heads development on EA Sports’ FIFA franchise, to talk about how the Brazilian footballer coined the term “the beautiful game”. (There was no mention, however, of the FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada, currently under way.)

Not all publishers have had the same success with their press events. Comedian Jamie Kennedy acted as emcee for Activision in 2007. When he was coherent he insulted the audience and the industry, which has resulted in his appearance at E3 being commonly referred to as a “train wreck”. The company hasn’t had a formal press briefing since its Jamie Kennedy “experience,” and this year simply staged invite-only play sessions for its Guitar Hero and Call of Duty games.

Indeed, personalities can make or break these events. It’s not only a problem at E3. Director Michael Bay suffered a meltdown at a Samsung press event at CES in January 2014 when a teleprompter failed and he couldn’t ad lib. Instead, he just stared into the crowd like he was a deer on the highway, then turned and walked away.

Ubisoft’s 2011 press conference was hosted by Mr. Caffeine, a stage name for comedian Aaron Priceman. His performance at the event, held to celebrate the company’s 25th anniversary, was widely panned.

Ubisoft turned it around the next year, when actor and self-proclaimed “girl geek” Aisha Tyler took to the stage. She’s been a stalwart success ever since because she is genuinely knowledgeable about and familiar with video games and gamers.

In 2013, she wore a t-shirt on stage with the phrase “#girlwood”, a reference to the previous year when she gushed about how excited she was for the games on display. It was also a not so subtle dig at misinformed neanderthals who had the gall to criticize her for not being a gamer.

The decision to stage these big productions is not made lightly. They are expensive, logistically challenging, and ripe for criticism.

While for years the audience for the pre-E3 events has been media, analysts, and retail partners, now it’s gamers themselves. Bethesda, EA, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and other video game publishers seek to capitalize on the direct-to-consumer channels brought about by the Internet and streaming video. Oculus, which is developing a virtual reality headset, even staged an online E3 event that broadcast widely a full week before the trade show itself.

Online video service Twitch said that this year, the various preceding showcases all had more than 500,000 “concurrent viewers,” with some pulling in more than 700,000.

One advantage of the broadcast method is being able to have key executives appear as puppets, as Nintendo did on Tuesday morning. The company dropped live events in 2013 in favour of an online video stream, preferring to communicate directly with fans. Taking the connection to players a step further, Nintendo has stations inside Best Buy stores across Canada and the U.S. where players can try out the upcoming Super Mario Maker on Wednesday and Saturday.

On Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Pete Hines confessed why Bethesda opted to stage its first-ever pre-E3 public event. Mr. Hines, the head of public relations and marketing, said it was to liberate a key talent from having to work so hard during the trade show.

Todd Howard, game director on Fallout 4, would normally spend three days hosting demos on the floor of the convention centre, shuffling a small group of people into a pen every hour on the hour. It’s an exhausting, taxing necessity. Instead, Mr. Howard showed everyone Fallout 4, in loving detail, at the same time, at the showcase. And Mr. Howard didn’t just show people who happened to be in Los Angeles because the showcase was broadcast to millions watching online.