I attended E3 in the early 2000s during its prime. I remember fondly of the MGS2 trailer debut, Nintendo Gamecube and Xbox announcement, the fall of the Sega Dreamcast. E3 was technically a "trade show" and a lot of journalists, whom themselves hardcore gamers, attend and try to beat each other to publish the first story on new games. There are conference talking about the industry, business, and technical workshops about new technology. I've been in interviews with Peter Moore, J Allard, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Cliff B, Yuji Naka, Yu Suzuki, and so on. It was genuinely exciting. I also remember Nintendo released a bunch of trailers online, on the day before E3 floor is to open.

So looking back, I think that was the key difference. I remember getting the tripod and try to find a good spot and waiting for the MGS2 trailer premier, so I can get a good feed and upload the video, back then, you need to be in the media and have an invite in order to attend the press conference, and you try to write the stories and there are even media area with internet so that the journalists can work and send out news.

Now, completedly different, every major press conference is broadcasted live, every trailer is available the moment the embargo was lifted, media already know and probably have already written stories just waiting to be published because they are already briefed on the new titles. So, what's the point of attending the floor show anymore? All the big titles are already knowns, doing interviews on the noisy floor is horrible because all the music and noise are interfering, not to mention the slots are all scheduled way in advance, good lucky trying to score an interview with famous industry personalities.

Today, having a highly produced press conference is just so much easier, the Internet really is what killed E3. I've attended PAX and similar shows, none of them comopare to the prime days of E3.