Game industry association recovers from shooting itself in the foot
There has been a lot angst about the state of the $22 billion video game industry’s trade association and its major trade show in the past few years. It has all been very confusing to watch a healthy industry torpedo its major trade show, E3.
But the annual report of the Entertainment Software Association sheds light on what has happened and it helps explain why the game industry trade group has behaved the way it did. GameSpot reported that the ESA reported revenues of $28.2 million in the year ended March 28, 2008. A year earlier, it had revenues of $29.0 million.
The source of that income is interesting. The 2006 E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo, picture above) generated $18.5 million in revenue for the ESA in March, 2007. That was the last of the giant E3 shows. Publishers, who are members of the ESA, began to complain that their show costs were spiraling out of control.
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