As you know, a few members of the Destructoid family are going to be live blogging from the floor of CES this weekend (assuming they can drag themselves away from the hookers, booze and adorable desert lizards), and I caught wind of an interesting article the New York Times recently ran regarding the show itself. They go deeply into the math behind the event and just how ridiculously risky it is to put up a booth. The amount of cash spent by any of the presenters you would see at shows like this is just mind boggling, and it makes one wonder why these companies do it.
E3 collapsed due to the massive amount of money it took to put up a booth. Functionally, the big players in the industry were tired of having to output so many ducats for what was essentially a marketing gamble. Sure, you could make headlines by revealing some amazing new game, but you could also spend the same amount of money and have Danny Bonaduce tattoo the name of your game across his forehead. Then again, unless your game is Tekken 6: Partridge Family Throwdown, hiring Danny probably won’t help much.
I’m not saying that CES and the other trade shows are totally useless, but it really takes tremendous sums of money (that the consumers are generally oblivious to) to make a splash at these things and the Times’ article illustrates that point using mankind’s oldest, wisest friend: arithmetic. If you plan to be at CES, be a nice guy and toss the developers a couple quarters. They’ll need it after this weekend.
