The DeanBeat: E3 will bring us another installment of the war for the eyeballs

It seems like I’m just finishing up the games that the last Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) promised us, and now the new E3 is going to bring us a whole new batch of blockbusters to get excited about. Indeed, I’ve been playing games like Quantum Break, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Doom, and Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst.

But now I’m about to see a lot more. Mike Gallagher, chief executive of the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group that puts on E3, told me in an interview that we’ll see 2,000 game announcements at the show, including 130 that will appear for the first time. A year ago, the number was 1,600, with 110 new announcements. So this trade show that everybody feared was dying (because Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard pulled their booths in favor of fan events) isn’t dead yet. Indeed, the game industry is expected to hit or far exceed the $100 billion revenue threshold soon, and E3 is the place where we’ll see all of the trends and games that will be on the radar in the future. And E3 will likely have around 50,000 people, not counting 20,000 fans coming in to companion events. Dead events don’t draw that many people.