I don't see why Sony or Microsoft couldn't have those types of sketches and developer videos play on the giant screens at their conferences in between game announcements if they wanted to without limiting it to a digital only event. We saw a bit of that during the PS4 reveal.

I think most of us are still looking forward to not only next year's E3 but other conferences like Gamescom and TGS.
A live event is always a bit more exciting than something that's pre-baked(so to speak).

Look at how many people got excited by Nintendo's presser, it was pre-baked.

Sony's show last year was memorable for two reasons:
#1 because it was new hardware.
#2 because they catered to the console war fanboys by taking the mickey out of Microsoft at every turn possible.

The fact that they did it via conference had absolutely nothing to do with the way they dominated; the majority of people viewing that presentation did so online. That's where all the hype came from, not so much the audience, because the audiences have been scaled down dramatically in size and reaction quality ever since the conferences went press-only.

I can virtually guarantee you that most of the hype came from people watching it online and reacting with their fellows; the crowd reaction from the press wasn't even nearly as big a factor as all of the chat rooms exploding all over the internet when Sony kept delivering KO after KO to Micro.XD

At this point, it wouldn't even matter if Sony and Micro went digital; they'd still be able to garner tons of press with the right announcements.
Of course, it would be smart if they supplemented it with some way of doing a show for a larger public crowd alongside the internet reactions.
Sony did something with theaters, but we didn't get to see those huge theaters full of people reacting to the stuff live.
Nintendo, however, did that tournament with over two thousand attendee's.
That's a crowd that can increase hype; if Sony or Microsoft did something like that next year instead of a down-scaled press conference, in addition to their digital streams, they'd get a better reaction.

@Monkeyman

You start off by listing reasons why Sony's conference was memorable then assume that the same reaction would have happened with everyone at home. That's where you're wrong.

Nintendo did the same bit last year minus the comedy. What was good about that conference? Easisly forgotten.

As for the fanboy part, that was for consumers...not people like you. Sony did that for all gamers and it worked. With Nintendo being largely irrelavant in the console space, it was up to Sony to reject those
awful policies and win one for the gamer.

I meant it mostly as a joke cause we all know the costs of these tariffs were passed onto the consumer. But it's seems no matter how vocal we are here in the states our "representatives" don't seem to care enough to represent us. And things are about to get worse.