Everything Everywhere Once A Week (9/08/23)

Hello and welcome to Everything Everywhere Once A Week, a weekly newsletter about the goings on in the video game industry over the last week. This’ll be a shorter one this week as I’m between both announcing the game I’ve been working on and also going to Tokyo next week to help market said game. Still, there’s a few stories I definitely wanted to hit, so let’s get to it.

E3 Not Returning for 2024, Reinventing for 2025

The Entertainment Software Association — the ESA, a lobbying group made of major western publishers that also puts on E3 every year — has explained that once again E3 will not be doing a traditional summer show. They are planning a reinvention for 2025, but their partner Reedpop, the company behind PAX, is exiting as their partner. Reedpop was supposed to help put on 2023’s show before it was canceled and the split suggests it and the ESA have parted acrimoniously.

A lack of a 2024 show, especially announced this early, is not news. That’s not to say the lack of a show isn’t significant, but what I mean is that E3 is assumed dead. A 2025 show would not be a revival as much as it would be an entirely new thing that calls itself E3. I don’t want to be overly harsh here, but the E3 people think they remember is never, ever coming back. The world just does not work that way anymore and even if the ESA cobbles together some kind of celebrity-activated gaming-themed show in 2025, it’s only going to be E3 in name.

I’ve banged on this drum before, but the idea of “gaming Christmas” was always going to be ephemeral. It spoke to a consumer-centered marketing plan where people thought they were getting all the benefits, but it could only last so long until everyone woke up and realized that consumer attention only works when it translates directly into spending. Making E3 still do that is damn near impossible. Making Summer Games Fest do that is also likely impossible, which is probably why it will always be a weaker show than the E3 from ten years ago.

This isn’t to say the show never had benefits, as it was a great place for networking. Going to E3 could be that thing that took someone from an amateur to a professional or connected developers together for new publishing opportunities or jobs. But also, like, man the ESA doesn’t really care about that. A “fixed” E3 might only fix that as a byproduct of whatever the hell it’s trying to do these days. And if the publishers aren’t on board, then the consumers aren’t on board, and then everyone in the middle like journalists and developers outside the AAA space are stuck in a limbo of waiting for everyone else to figure out their shit and no one really benefits.

All this to say, we can save the headline ink on E3 being gone, it’s already etched on a tombstone.

Switch 2 Supposedly Shown with Comparable Graphics to Modern Consoles

The “throwing cold water” on things conga line continues. This week, Eurogamer reported that the successor to the Switch — which we’ll just call Switch 2 for expediency’s sake — was demoed to developers behind closed doors at Gamescom in Germany. VGC then added that sources told them the Matrix Unreal Engine 5 tech demo was part of the presentation, with results comparable to PS5 and Series X.

If you’re asking me if I think the non-speculative and non-opinion parts of these reports are true, I’d lean yes. Putting some video files on a laptop and showing them to key European partners, like say a Ubisoft or CD Projekt Red, likely makes sense. I doubt they took hardware with them to Germany, but some footage of Breath of the Wild running at a higher resolution? Yeah, I can buy that. I’d also buy that the Matrix tech demo was used and probably did look pretty good. Unreal Engine was a weakness for the Switch and Nintendo is probably pretty eager to future-proof compatibility with it, especially with how scalable UE5 seems to be.

When you get into comparisons, though, I feel like we need to pump the brakes a little. At some point, this thing is going to need to be in hardware that runs on a battery and won’t melt your hands to use it. Is it possible? Sure! Should we keep our expectations in check on possibilities, though? Yeah!

Moreover, I think adding more power does mean more headroom rather than guarantees that your head will hit the ceiling. What I mean by that is, even if that were true, I suspect Mario will still largely look like Mario does with some more bells and whistles rather than itself becoming comparable to high-budget AAA games on PS5 and Series X.

But time will tell.

Aonuma Denies Tears of the Kingdom DLC

Eiji Aonuma said this week that the team is looking to move beyond Tears of the Kingdom and does not expect more content for the game. For people still hoping for more DLC for the game akin to Breath of the Wild’s new modes and story content, there’s a few ways to look at this. One, his statement does not necessarily preclude a hypothetical Switch 2 version with more content, a tactic Nintendo has used before with Wii U ports and even Zelda games like Link’s Awakening. Another is that they could just straight up be lying and they’ll do DLC and announce it when they’re ready and no one will care that they ever denied it.

If you take him at face value, though, the team is ready to move on to a new game with a new Hyrule. Considering how long these games take, that could put the next major Zelda game at roughly 2028 or 2029. Hope you don’t mind a long wait.

Other Things:

• I’m playing Starfield. I don’t dislike it, but I see why people are disappointed. I was hoping for a game that felt twelve years better than Skyrim and I don’t think Starfield is that. I don’t think any individual game is, to be clear, but I think there’s a lot of games that run circles around what Starfield does in terms of mechanics and writing. Obviously I’ll play more and we’ll see how that feeling changes.
• I realized I’m going to be out of down the weekend Mario Wonder and Spider-Man 2 come out, so please send me all your condolences.