It's official.

pic.twitter.com/y6dtVkBvNI

— E3 (@E3) December 12, 2023

Iconic E3 moment.

But really, this will always remain my favorite E3 moment of all time.

I downloaded this clip off Kazaa and watched it at least 25 times that day. The hype from Zelda fans was insane.

I don't remember that because, by that time, I was off the Nintendo train and probably busy playing Halo or COD.

What's fun about that Zelda clip, they used the exact same music used in the trailer for Ocarina of Time. Just like you, I downloaded that trailer (off dial up, took forever!!!) and probably watched it 100 times.

The writing was on the wall, but sad to see it go. Between covid, the big companies splitting off into their own showcases, and other shows gaining more traction, it just couldn't carve out the same niche it once had. For so many years, it was always a bright spot of game reveals and building excitement.

I had a couple of chances to go but could never quite make it work, and wish now that I had. Also dragging up a few memories of working overtime to get demos ready in time.

If I recall correctly, one of the early Civ games came with a big foldout poster of the tech tree and I don't believe it was included in the game itself so you had to refer to it to plan out your tech progress.

Murdered by the Dorito Pope Geoff Keighley

texsn95 said:

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Ah yeah Nintendo Power, I remember getting stuck in Startropics and called their gaming support for I think $2/min, but they helped me through it.

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No way... I did the exact same thing for the exact same game! Was it for the part with the piano? Some parrot called out the notes to play on the piano but I was too young to know/understand that so the Nintendo hot line had to walk me through it.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Getting my EGM magazine in the mail each month.

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Subscription to Nintendo Power, but EGM was my go to mag to buy at the store when I could. The cover art and a quick browse in the store would tell me if it was worthy of me taking it home to read cover-to-cover.

Of course, the month before and the month after E3 were big time must have issues... they covered everything!

I can still picture the bottom drawer of my desk... I saved (and often re-read) those magazines for about a year or two until it was full and I had to start parting ways with my older / less favorite issues.

texsn95 said:

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Ah yeah Nintendo Power, I remember getting stuck in Startropics and called their gaming support for I think $2/min, but they helped me through it.

This is one of my favorite E3 trailers, from 2006

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Startropics!!!

jr15aggie said:

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texsn95 said:

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Ah yeah Nintendo Power, I remember getting stuck in Startropics and called their gaming support for I think $2/min, but they helped me through it.

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No way... I did the exact same thing for the exact same game! Was it for the part with the piano? Some parrot called out the notes to play on the piano but I was too young to know/understand that so the Nintendo hot line had to walk me through it.

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Wish I could remember, think I was around 8-9 at the time. I do still remember the excitement of my parents bringing home the NES from Target, good times good times

I do have a couple core memories of watching G4 during the summer for E3 when I was in high school. I remember going to the movie theaters to watch Sony's press conference year of dreams when people lost their ****ing **** at FF7 Remake, Shenmue, and Last Guardian. I will miss those days.

Fenrir said:

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If I recall correctly, one of the early Civ games came with a big foldout poster of the tech tree and I don't believe it was included in the game itself so you had to refer to it to plan out your tech progress.

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Civ 1 did, there's a fold out one at the back of the manual. Still have my copy and the box it came in. A long with 2 and all the others

30 years ago the game was $55.95. Still a lot of money but worth it even been then.

$49.99 for Super Mario 2 and 3. That took a hell of a lot of grass to cut in order to be able to pick up those!

I'll miss it! It was great knowing big games would be announced from all major gaming platforms in one week every year. They were obligated to show us something too.

Now, there's just so many games out there and independent developers, we get major announcements every quarter on YouTube now. But also, games are taking longer and longer to build.

I'm glad everyone still does their own big press announcements like Xbox Games Showcase, PlayStation State of Play, and Nintendo Direct.

The Fife said:

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Fenrir said:

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If I recall correctly, one of the early Civ games came with a big foldout poster of the tech tree and I don't believe it was included in the game itself so you had to refer to it to plan out your tech progress.

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Civ 1 did, there's a fold out one at the back of the manual. Still have my copy and the box it came in. A long with 2 and all the others

30 years ago the game was $55.95. Still a lot of money but worth it even been then.

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That's exactly it. I wonder if my copy is still somewhere at my parents house.

jr15aggie said:

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Yeah, it's honestly amazing how inflation has not hardly touched video game prices compared to so many other consumer products.

Going back to the NES days I recall new games typically being $39.99-$49.99. Some of the SNES games got up to $69 because of cartridge memory costs.

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Inflation has happened, it has just happened at around a similar level to the growth of the consumer base so the cost to the consumer hasn't changed dramatically. If this was still a niche hobby it would be either expensive as **** or we simply would not have near as many AAA or near AAA quality games.

That's what I meant... games should be close to $100 if they were keeping up with other inflation trends.

What I will also say, is there are other technology items that are in the same boat. I saw an old late 80's / early 90's video of a guy walking around a Sears. Holy crap, some of the appliances were just as, if not more, expensive than the same appliances today. I saw Microwaves for $300+..... you can walk into a best buy or Target and get a pretty good one for $100-$200.

When it comes to technology and technology components, many things have continued to be easier & cheaper to produce so the prices are stable.

Yeah I'm not disagreeing with you or anything in general. More just commenting on how the growth of the consumer base has made it so cheaper relatively speaking.

Consumer base definitely plays a part, but there are other factors at work on the production side. Things like shifting from primarily physical media to digital, microtransactions/DLC, and the ability to outsource major roles to cheaper locales have all played huge parts in keeping prices stable over the past couple of decades. All of it ties in to how developers have utilized the internet as it has evolved, something E3 (to keep it somewhat on topic) fell behind on in a way that eventually led to its downfall.

On the flip side, overall complexity is driving the need to increase prices in the way we've seen the last couple of years. There are more specialized roles and skillsets needed, and games keep getting bigger and more detailed with each generation, and with it, game teams get bigger while production cycles go on for longer.

bluefire579 said:

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Consumer base definitely plays a part, but there are other factors at work on the production side. Things like shifting from primarily physical media to digital, microtransactions/DLC, and the ability to outsource major roles to cheaper locales have all played huge parts in keeping prices stable over the past couple of decades. All of it ties in to how developers have utilized the internet as it has evolved, something E3 (to keep it somewhat on topic) fell behind on in a way that eventually led to its downfall.

On the flip side, overall complexity is driving the need to increase prices in the way we've seen the last couple of years. There are more specialized roles and skillsets needed, and games keep getting bigger and more detailed with each generation, and with it, game teams get bigger while production cycles go on for longer.

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I think a caveat to this though is that it just applies to AAA titles. There are so many freaking 2D platform games and independent studio games on Xbox now you can't keep up with them. So there has been a massive backfill of smaller games in the past several years that can get through a lull, if desired.

Personally, it takes me a year to play a AAA game so the long dev times don't bother too much.

YouBet said:

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bluefire579 said:

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Consumer base definitely plays a part, but there are other factors at work on the production side. Things like shifting from primarily physical media to digital, microtransactions/DLC, and the ability to outsource major roles to cheaper locales have all played huge parts in keeping prices stable over the past couple of decades. All of it ties in to how developers have utilized the internet as it has evolved, something E3 (to keep it somewhat on topic) fell behind on in a way that eventually led to its downfall.

On the flip side, overall complexity is driving the need to increase prices in the way we've seen the last couple of years. There are more specialized roles and skillsets needed, and games keep getting bigger and more detailed with each generation, and with it, game teams get bigger while production cycles go on for longer.

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I think a caveat to this though is that it just applies to AAA titles. There are so many freaking 2D platform games and independent studio games on Xbox now you can't keep up with them. So there has been a massive backfill of smaller games in the past several years that can get through a lull, if desired.

Personally, it takes me a year to play a AAA game so the long dev times don't bother too much.

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For sure, and the price point on those usually reflect it. That's been a separate benefit of the evolution of gaming alongside the internet, the ability for independent developers to get their games out there before audiences in a way that they never could before.

That's also a spot where PAX really took a step past E3 in that it was affordable for indies to come, have small booths, and get exposure to their games.

Bit of a tangent, but this reminded me of it...the second game I ever worked on, the studio decided to self publish and do it exclusively online at a time where everything, including PC, was still disc driven. At the time, Sony allowed for online store only for the PS3 and PC of course had it through Steam and a few other more niche ones, but Xbox Arcade was the only option on Xbox and it required a publisher who had already published games on Xbox. So we ended up having to have Microsoft publish us to be able to release, which meant making it a timed exclusive. Now, of course, it's a lot easier to do so, but just an example that shows how things were getting figured out when online stores were in their early stages.