The Show Must Go On.

Bloated, over-indulged and tacky, E3 2006 was an embarrassing and unsustainable mess of a trade show. Hindsight's a wonderful thing. And most of us, myself included, were intoxicated by the glitz and the glamour of the old spectacle, barking like trained seals as the rest of the world registered our existence for a few honeyed days basking in the LA sunshine.

But the double-digit million-dollar price tag of a show-stopping stand was, in the end, enough to sober up the flashiest of publishers. And then reality kicked in: one of childish one-upmanship, poisonous self-interest, dripping claustrophobia and, most damningly, professional futility - a business conference where holding a business meeting was akin to shouting down a pneumatic drill, where networking was like a giant game of Where's Wally? Want to show off that new triple-A game oozing atmosphere? Not in here, mate.

The real question about E3, then, is not how it all went so wrong, but how we all put up with it for so long. Well, because it worked - kind of. Huge parties, big announcements, journalists, in some cases literally, fighting to cover games, and lashings and lashings of lovely column inches. Who cares if the code looks a bit shoddy? They can't get near the pods anyway! Trebles all round!

Who cares? Shareholders during a belt-tightening transition, for starters. And as soon as one major player questions the value, the rest come tumbling down like a house of cards.

In the face of epic antipathy, the ESA had a thankless task in picking through the pieces of E3 and reconstructing the show as a model of prudence, restraint and professionalism while retaining its colossal stature. Yet despite many of us bracing for disaster, what's remarkable in this context is that it was not a failure. In fact, far from it.

Make no mistake, E3 2007 was all about the platform holders - and without their conferences, the whole event may well have died on its arse. The antics of the Big Three provided focus, cohesion and a sense of purpose to a summit desperate for meaning.

Fact-hungry bloggers and forumites were disappointed by the lack of coffee-spitting proclamations, but that's not the ESA's fault - this was always going to be an E3 of consolidation rather than revelation as the new formats bed in. That's not to say there weren't any fish thrown out for us seals; rather the show has become a victim of its own extravagant posturing over the years. Consumers' expectations are set for stun.

And old habits die hard. Each of The Three dutifully played to the gallery for cheap cheers right on cue. But the gallery had changed - no whooping and hollering fanboys this year thanks to strictly limited attendance - and this resulted in some notable misjudgements.

Microsoft's announcement of the Halo 3 Xbox 360, built to a crescendo, was met with awkward silence; the contrived Cult of Reggie act seemed faintly absurd without the usual flock of teary-eyed worshippers in the Nintendo congregation. Only Sony really got the tone right, parodying last year's disastrous effort to reveal, stone the crows, some humility - welcome, however staged it may have been.

More important, however, all three grasped the essential truth of the new E3 - that the age of the be-all-and-end-all trade megashow is over, and the LA showcase has a crucial yet more tightly defined role to play in the global round of events that now includes the likes of GDC, Game Convention and TGS.

The earlier May date and pressure to perform on the biggest stage of all has forced the platform holders into some spectacular blunders in the recent past - 360 code nowhere near ready to be shown two years ago, PS3 pricing and giant enemy crabs last year.

The shift to July against this backdrop has had a subtle yet profound impact. Microsoft last year broke with tradition to make a flurry of major announcements at X06 in September. It didn't matter that most weren't playable - the announcements were enough in themselves.

Come July, and with development in the advanced stages, it was time to show the world for real what they will be playing in a few months. Having gazed into its crystal ball at X06, Microsoft at E3 made a virtue of focusing on the now. "The greatest holiday line-up in history," was the only message Xbox boss Peter Moore was interested in relaying. The goal posts have not so much shifted as multiplied.

Likewise Sony. No amateurish stage demos this year, just slick video featurettes, the long-awaited PSP redesign and a big push behind its Home service - again due before Christmas. A playable demonstration of Killzone 2 rounded off the show, but only because of the immense - and justified - confidence Sony had in it.

And the pricing announcements for the US and Europe, significantly, were made before and after the conference respectively. Sony can, of course, play a different hand at Tokyo Game Show in its own backyard in the autumn. And Nintendo is the least dependent of all on the traditional annual fireworks display, its evolving business model freeing it from such restraints.

E3's utility as a trade event must be judged in part against the fact that retail attendance was well down. But that, paradoxically, is because of, not despite, the focus on the Christmas peak season.

May's E3 was always a vital research mission for retail, off the back of which stocking decisions would be made for Q4. Individual briefings ahead of this year's event having already tied -up business, and with much more solid code available, the platform holders could tout their festive wares with greater confidence than ever before while ironing out the details.

Foreign retail stayed away not just because of timings - the amorphous concept of new E3 was too hard a sell to justify the expense in advance, and this also applied to the international media, too.

From the media's perspective, the smaller attendance proved to be the show's greatest strength. In place of queues and crowds, there was calm and clarity. And the relaxed atmosphere generated unexpected opportunities - take SCEE's low key beach-side event for European media, at which SCE president Kaz Hirai was quietly mingling, spending much of his evening giving impromptu interviews to anyone who asked.

Yes, Sony desperately needed some good PR this year - compare and contrast with Nintendo's US execs, who remained as disappointingly aloof and unattainable to the foreign specialist press as ever - but it's hard to imagine a similar situation at old E3.

The main conundrum here is for third-parties. If E3 continues with this date and low-fi set-up, there's no point in re-heating the same code for the same journalists for the second, and in some cases, third time. But what didn't work perfectly this year also didn't cost the Earth.

The me-too conveyor belt of third-party conference calls which followed hot on the heels of Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony were largely unnecessary. Senseless organisation didn't help; delegates were forced to leave the theatre and queue up outside before readmittance to the next session. But for many of the third-parties lining up to take their place on stage at the Fairmont, it was sheer hubris.

In their defence, the overriding impression was of a publishing community which turned up and performed because it thought it should, but without any real idea of why it was there or what it was supposed to be doing, having already spent the past couple of months showing the same games to the same people. Right reason, wrong approach.

What else didn't work? Logistically, the scattergun location plan was an unwieldy mess, and far too much time was wasted in transit. And the Barker Hangar - the main gameplay hall - might as well have been in Basra for all its accessibility.

While this dislocation frustrated the taxi seat-sore press, it also disappointed publishers and developers, stuck in their particular corner of Santa Monica for the duration, with no scope for touring competitors' areas.

This also stifled the potential for ad-hoc meetings, which should have benefited hugely from the reduced attendance. If we get an E3 2008, for the sake of business and sanity, it has to be either under a single roof or spread across locations that are in exactly the same area, not miles apart.

Meanwhile, the strict, uncompromising and inflexible pre-show registration was made a mockery of by hotel-based event staff handing out broadcast media wristbands like sweets on days two and three.

But those still grumbling about the demise of Hollywood-style pyrotechnic pizazz for a trade show should grow up. Would you really rather spend an hour queuing to play a game in the equivalent of a mosh pit? If a few old egos don't get to swagger quite as much as before, so be it.

Have the booth babes, light shows, rock music and 360-degree screens by all means. Just save them for, you know, the people you want to buy your games. It's really not a complex equation. US consumers have this October's E for All spin-off; but it's a shame the powers-that-be never had the foresight to mix business with pleasure in previous years. Europe's Game Convention model - with a separate, quieter area for business and a sprawling consumer element - is on the right track, but in the wrong place.

If certain publishers still feel compelled to burn huge piles of cash, throw a party and headline it with 'Britney and Bono: For One Night Only', if you must. Just let us to do our jobs during the day. And with this year's E3, that's precisely what we were able to do.

E3 had to change as it had become an unmanageable, anachronistic waste of time and money. This year's model was far from perfect, but it did work in important ways. And anyway, does the industry really need a single money-burning spectacular to make it feel good about itself? Understanding of where new E3 fits in the global jigsaw puzzle of events, not revisionist nostalgia, is what's now required.