New E3 Show Announced - Smaller and Invite-only

fiorenza writes "The ESA has announced the date and venue for the new E3 show, which is to be renamed the E3 Media and Business Summit. The show has move moved from May to July, and next year will take place on July 11-13 in Santa Monica, California. Doug Lowenstein, the president of the ESA, said that past attendees wanted a smaller more formal show that would be oriented to the media instead of the consumer, so it will now be invitation-only and many of the 'events' will actually take place in hotel suites. It looks like other gaming shows will need to step in if the glitz and glitter of E3 is to be saved."

You hear that?

[i kan reed]

That's E3 losing half their "fan"-base. I predict that in a few years, we'll see some other expo put E3 out. Just you watch.

Re:You hear that?

[wish bot]

No, that's E3 getting back to how it was originally.

Re:

[loraksus]

Or E3 before it sold a hundred thousand tickets at $300 each or whatever. It will be back, if for only that reason alone.

Re:

[MMaestro]

A back stage act for the electonics industry?

E3 was "originally" nothing more than a series of scattered events around the world because no one wanted to alienate the masses by making it "corporate employees only" and corporations didn't want to play ball with one another. Obviously you need some "Press Only" events, but they have those already.

Why take away E3? You have immature exhibitors throwing hotel parties before/during/after E3 and they wonder why E3 turned into a giant video game mosh pit! (Websi

Re:

[LordVader717]

E3 always was a press-only event, it was never intended for fans. But then more and more "journalists" began to come.
What happened in the last few years is that anyone with a reasonably visited blog got a ticket. And then we began to see the fruits of these huge torrents of quite immature and unprofessional "journalists": Booth Babes at every corner, stupid parties, and more and more covorage happening "behind closed doors", for the real journalists. The big players didn't even bother revealing anything at

Re:

[MMaestro]

E3 was never really supposed to be a press-only event when you consider how the ESA fumbled the whole thing in the first place. Bill Gates has only showed up once in the 4~5 years the Xbox/Xbox 360 has been out. Nintendo had Spaceworld until 2001 (and has a special relationship with PAX) and Sony has/had a history of making PS1/2/3 announcements sporatically throughout the year (PS2 Linux, PS2 Slim, the PSX, the PSOne, last minute launch changes, etc).

Booths were more attactive than the games themselves at

Re:

[LordVader717]

My point eactly. E3 was just too stupid for how important it was supposed to be. If all they do is have fun, then why should only press representatives be admitted? You have Events like PAX for that.

Re:

[oohshiny]

Maybe E3 will be how it was originally, but the world isn't anymore, and the original E3 in a modern gaming world makes little sense.

I mean, I would like the Internet to be what it was like 20 years ago (nice community, non-commercial, none of this hysteria and attention from politicians), but there is no way to make that happen because the world has changed.

Re:

[Jepah]

No I can't hear that, I've been to E3 the last few years.

Bring it on!

[Viper_Viper]

This just means it will be more of a chalenge getting in, unlike the last two years for me :p

What's the purpose of E3?

[LionKimbro]

This is a serious question.

I have read [gamasutra.com] that PAX [pennyarcadeexpo.com] is not, cannot, be a replacement for E3. [e3insider.com]

I can accept this; I just wonder aloud: "What is the purpose of E3?" What essential role did it play?

Re:

[ludomancer]

E3 was an expo that served the purpose of providing media exposure as well as organizing agreements between retail outlets and publishers for specific games, the amount they would carry, and the schedules of release.

Re:What's the purpose of E3?

[__aaclcg7560]

"What is the purpose of E3?"

When I working at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari for six years, the PR department put together a video from the company's E3 party. The management team was plastered, the vice president was on stage doing a showgirl routine in fishnet stockings, and a PR girl was grabbing her crotch while slurring through a song. I stopped going to the company Christmas party when my date and I left early as the cops were coming into the club to haul my supervisor out for allowing an underaged employee to have a drink.

Re:What's the purpose of E3?

[British]

When I working at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari for six years, the PR department put together a video from the company's E3 party.The management team was plastered, the vice president was on stage doing a showgirl routine in fishnet stockings, and a PR girl was grabbing her crotch while slurring through a song. .....aaand the YouTube link for that is? That sounds like some of the best entertainment to come out of Infogrames in a long time!

Re:

[loraksus]

Millions of kittens just cried out in terror and were silenced...

You uhh, got a video for that? ;)

Re:

[Michael Snoswell]

Meetings. When I had a startup games company money was pretty scarce. We went to E3 and met all the major publishers and did our presentations. It would be 3 days straight of meetings, negotiations, presentations as well as meeting other people in the same boat as us and learning from their experiences.

Actually visiting the booths was a distractions from the real business of E3.

If you went to E3 as a consumer you probably don't see all the meeting rooms where deals are done (those long boring quiet corridor

E3 got in the way of game development anyway

[autoacat]

Its a double-edged sword. We're still getting just as much gaming news as at last year's E3 and its nice to know the publishers won't be wasting money on "booth babes" and other promotional non-sense. Its still a shame, E3 turned from a media expo to a gaming holiday. This is just going closer to its roots.

Re:

[soccerisgod]

I quite liked the zombie woman [advancedmn.com] I saw on E3 2005. I really think it helped advertize the product she advertized for. Uh....whatever that was.

I got a picture of her strangling my friend. Ah... memories.

gaming shows stepping in

[teh MrCrow]

We DO have the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany (http://www.gc-germany.de/ [gc-germany.de]), which I believe is one of the best candidates to be the next gaming show with size of the E3. Although it is in Germany, it has greatly increased in popularity over the last few years, as more and more international game developers come there to show their stuff. But we will see.

But...

[DittoBox]

Will there still be booth babes?

yes....but at small private events they are called

[tacroy]

prostitutes

Re:yes....but at small private events they are cal

[Physician]

No, they're called escorts.

Re:yes....but at small private events they are cal

[Anonymous Coward]

8 kinds of prostitutes?

Save glitter?

[Dormann]

It looks like other gaming shows will need to step in if the glitz and glitter of E3 is to be saved."

Does the glitz and glitter need to be saved? Have you ever played a game and said "I wish they didn't work so hard on this game. If only they had rushed it out to stores prematurely or had fewer people working on it, they would have had more money for E3 glitz and glitter."

That glitz money has to come from somewhere.

Glitz and Glitter?

[Rydia]

Why? What's the point of 17 web sites having "booth babe specials" and regurgitating what everyone else has? Or of actual journalists (or at least the best the games media can scrounge up) getting real floor-time with the demonstrators and games. Or more budget being put towards people who can actually talk about the games, or a few more TVs for videos or demos?

So, uh, yeah. This is hardly the end of gaming. In fact, the lack of stupid distractions will probably help us actually, I don't know, be informed.

You want a party? Organize a party. This is a media event that simply got out of hand, and is being reeled back to where it should be.

Re:

[Khuffie]

The only thing that I really cared about during E3 were the big announcements from the Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft press conferences. Every year you had something to look forward to in May knowing that each company is going to announce something new and exciting, be it a new console, new portable, new game or whatever. I don't see the new E3 doing that. Oh well.

Re:

[Killcrone]

^ that one is mine :)

Well

[Sv-Manowar]

Is this really the way E3 want to be going? the whole point of it was mass exposure to the gaming industry along with the public. It was a spectacle, an event and being over the top was part of it. Now there are many other expos like this in other industries which run well, and the main reason for that is that the exhibitors have a reason to be there other than displaying their product (most usually it is networking with those in the same industry (an example being web expos, trading links/traffic etc)). However in the games industry, a rep from Nintendo isn't exactly going to hop on over there to the Sony booth and start discussing how they can do business, because in this industry it is done a lot higher up. E3 had some core problems and mis-management only aided these, along with the fact that so many people use the internet to get their news (Gamespot, IGN etc) that they don't need the previous magazine coverage of the event or even the event in order to stay in touch with what is happening. I think the decline of E3 is only bringing in a new era for the way that the games industry interacts with critics and fans alike.

Wow! I'm real excited now!

[MMaestro]

The E3 Media and Business Summit!

...

Sounds like the G8 political summit. A whole lot of talk, almost no mass public attention and a whole lot decided without the input of the people years before it'll eventually take effect. How is this for the better again?

Does E3 realy matter anyway?

[grapeape]

The only thing that ever seems to come out of E3 anymore are false hopes and shattered dreams. Its a hype show and usually based more of impossibly lofty goals and expectations rather than the reality of game making. Perhaps without E3 we will have less vaporware and dissappearing features and more games that are not rushed out the door with huge flaws that require patching before the game is even played.\

The only negative to the disappearance of e3 is perhaps the exposure for the small developer, unable

The Ultimate Game Show:

[torpor]

Would be open to the public, would encourage thousands and thousands of people - no matter who they are - to come to the event and play, indulge in the joy of game-playing, immerse themselves in a weeklong festival of games, games, and nothing but games. New releases could be made during this period, game companies would be able to plan their schedules around the week-long event, big surprises and huge capers could occur, and the general public would be actively involved - not because they were 'allowed' t

First Comdex, and now E3 :(

[Targon]

The problem with these shows going "behind closed doors" is that there will be zero reason for any company going to the show at all, in any form. The same companies can easily just invite the press to their own events at different places if all they want is a place to show reporters their recently announced products.

As for the "booth babes" being either good or bad, it depends. The web sites that show them as a feature in the reporting are a big part of the problem since the idea really is to show off t

E3 lessons.

[kinglink]

First and for most. E3 is not for fans. I have to start here because of the stupidity I see everywhere about it. "Oh I gotta go to that" Want to know why we now have this format? Because of those stupid ass fans. Why would companies want to have huge trade shows for the media where 50 percent of their time is talking to whiny fans? Simple, they don't. At least not E3, E3 is for the industry, for the people in the industry, for the people who report on the industry.

Hint: They don't care about your stup

Just Call It A 'Festival'

[thatguywhoiam]

Seems like the game industry could benefit from modelling these embryonic shows like E3 into a proper event like a Film Festival. E3 was sort of the Cannes of the game world. That way you could have a week-long multi-venue showing with independant game developers shopping their gems (or not) to publishers, and also give a nice nodal point for big releases to aim for (as E3 was for a time).

(Of course, I say this as someone who has been boycotting my own hometown Festival in Toronto, because it got too stup