Time to update the digital event showtimes
Xbox recently announced that they were hosting their E3 June 2024 Digital Showcase again, details for it here, but they again decided to host it at 3am AEST, which is not an ideal time for a showcase for us.
Yes the show is meant to happen at 10am Los Angeles time, which I am sure that folks in that time zone are more than ok with, but for a giant chunk of the world, that time is simply not acceptable. Let us just look at a few time zones for that event.
Los Angeles - 10am Sunday June 9
Brazil - 2pm Sunday June 9
London - 6pm Sunday June 9
India - 10:30pm Sunday June 9
Western Australia - 1am Monday June 10
Japan - 2am Monday June 10
Eastern Australia - 3am Monday June 10
New Zealand - 5am Monday June 10
As you can see there are really only three time zones, that I have listed, that have it at decent times. Anything east of India is either late that day or early the next day.
Now there is a problem, there is no one time that suits all time zones, for example if it was moved forward 3 hours, then India gets a 1:30am slot and Western Australia is still stuck at 4am. Move it to say 9am Eastern Australian time, that puts Los Angeles at 4pm, which is fine for them, but throws London to 12am.
So there is always going to be a part of the world that either has a late night or early morning and it is always our wedge of the world, unless you are PlayStation as they seem to have it worked out. For their January 2024 State of Play, they took the 2pm Los Angeles time slot, which translated to the following:
Los Angeles - 2pm Wednesday January 31
Brazil - 7pm Wednesday January 31
London - 10pm Wednesday January 31
India - 3:30am Thursday February 1
Western Australia - 6am Thursday February 1
Japan - 7am Thursday February 1
Eastern Australia - 9am Thursday February 1
New Zealand - 11am Thursday February 1
Now for that selection, India is the one getting shafted, which again is not ideal but it also perhaps the best time for everyone else.
So what can we do about this, well given we can’t align everyone to the same time zone, the only real action is that we adjust the shows to suit the largest section of the world where gamers are.
Now reports put the global gaming population around 3.220 billion, which is a lot of people and according to a number of statistic counting folks, the Asian region accounts for 1.48 billion of them. The next largest section is Europe with 715 million and then Latin America coming in third with 420 million, with India just right behind them. If you were wondering, North America is they have 285 million and our region Oceania is tiny at 32 million, which is at the bottom of the list.
The top 5 countries where people with internet access, also play games are:
Philippines
Indonesia
Vietnam
Thailand
Turkey
America, where all the shows tend to get aligned to, comes in at 21, though Australia is much worse at 38th. The reason I am showing those numbers, is to highlight that both the largest group of gamers are found in Asian countries and then the largest amount of gamers who have access to the internet are from the same region.
So given that the largest population of gamers are between UTC +6 to UTC +10, why are the shows based around UTC -8. If we were to align to the largest number of gamers, then a show like Xbox could be the hosted at the following times:
Los Angeles - 1pm Sunday June 9
Brazil - 5pm Sunday June 9
London - 9pm Sunday June 9
India - 1:30am Monday June 10
Western Australia - 4am Monday June 10
Japan - 5am Monday June 10
Eastern Australia - 6am Monday June 10
New Zealand - 8am Monday June 10
While most of the times above do suit most folks, it still isn’t perfect, but again we are accounting for the largest section of gamers and while it would be an early start for us, along with Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore and all the other countries in the area, it is not a stupidly late time for Europe. You could of course move things a few hours forward, for example 2hrs forward, so 3pm LA time, means 8am for us, but puts Europe at 12am.
Now all of this is speculation and perhaps a little bit of old man yells at cloud, but I am really over 3am events, just because Xbox want to stick to some random schedule they came up with a decade ago. Nintendo are no better, they are either 6am here or 12/1am depending on the time of year and while PlayStation are the best of the 3 console makers, they host so few digital events, that it matters little. Third party events are almost always at 5am AEST and while I would love to have seen them do more to align, sometimes just them being able to put on a show is a big deal.
What this boils down to is that when a company is selecting their time for their Direct, Showcase, State of Play or whatever they call it, I would just love them to take a bit of time and make a decision around choosing a time zone that suits as many people as they can, rather than just picking a time that suits anyone living in Los Angeles and calling it a day.
