My perspective is a little slanted since Im always at events like SDCC but even on just a Hasbro level (ignoring all the other aspects of the Convention) theres a lot more to these events than just buying stuff.
#1 buying the items at the show and walking out with them creates a new fun memory which is attached to that item thus adds value. Thats something you dont get when you just order something online and it shows up 6 months later. In that sense so much of the fun of getting them in person at an event is it feels like your memories of Christmas when you were a kid or when you went on a family vacation to Disneyland or wherever and got that toy or item that you now always associate with the vacation, experience, or occasion. A PulseCon virtual event doesnt replicate any of that.
#2 Walking through the physical booth and seeing all the reveals and Easter eggs has a more tactile excitement to it. Even though you cant touch the items seeing them in 3 dimensions in person at an SDCC is not something that gets replicated with a virtual PulseCon where its just looking at a 2 dimensional slide on a screen (which is likely just a computer mock-up).
#3 At the convention you can actually engage with the people at Hasbro and literally talk about the product. This is always way more honest, interesting, insightful, and engaging than any engagement you will ever get once the cameras start rolling for a virtual PulseCon (its also way less toxic). And these in person conversations because they have more depth and more back and forth do at times lead to improvements.
#4 The Conventions are communal. Be it walking through the booth or sitting through an in person panel seeing the reveals, getting surprised, and talking about the product is something you share with those around you. Be it your friends or total strangers it becomes a shared experience. Pandemic or no, theres no getting together with your friends to watch a PulseCon stream. Thats something you do alone, sitting in front of your tv, computer, or phone.
We all know that be it at SDCC or be it at PulseCon Hasbro as a corporation obviously just wants our money, but at real events there is more to it and there are aspects that go beyond just selling us stuff. PulseCon on the other hand is 100% just a sales event and just an opportunity for Hasbro to make money. Thats it. There are no other aspects. Its just s cynical money grab where theres not even an attempt to disguise it.
At the end of the day I have often compared SDCC to Christmas. Sure corporations use Christmas as an opportunity to get us to spend money and buy more product but despite that being true there are so many other aspects to the holiday (family, friends, reliving old memories, creating new ones, etc) which makes the fact that we are spending all that extra money more valuable The same thing is true for SDCC. So as a new extension of that analogy I have to say that if SDCC, NYCC, Emerald City, Power-Con, Joe and Bot Con (back when they existed), etc = days like Christmas and Thanksgiving, then PulseCon = Black Fridaynothing more than a cynical sales event to get us to spend money.
With the previous announcements, this really makes sense, but I'm not really sure that splitting attention to even more fragments would help boost the sales. It's just an awful lot of information now on the scene.
Actually as someone who is not attending SDCC I much prefer the virtual events. It makes it a whole lot easier to get the exclusives and Hasbro can do their reveals on their own platform without all the commotion of a convention, that and a lot cheaper for them as well. This makes total sense to me.
Great news. Hopefully the exclusives for pulsecon are good.
