Continued

Jussi Laakkonen, the business head of developer Bugbear, told us, "E3 was always the spectacle. It attracted a lot of mainstream media attention and just about everybody was there which made meeting people handy. Therein lies the dilemma too: it was a spectacle and everybody was there, so it was overcrowded, busy, and hardly no business got done. The right way to E3 was to go for the show and do the real business before or afterwards.

Some developer reps we asked felt that perhaps things went too far with the scaling back of E3. Pete Hines, the PR head of Bethesda Softworks, told us, "Won’t really know until we get to the show. My gut tells me they scaled it back too far." Rick Giolito, the co-founder of Trilogy Studios, told us, "It seems unbelievably small and “invite-only”. Is it the aim of the larger software companies to move their in-house press tours to one location for maximum exposure? I would guess that might be a good use for it."

Others are adopting a hopeful attitude for E3 this year. Randy Pitchford, the head of Gearbox Software, told us, "I’m curious to go through the experience. I’m hopeful and believe in some of the intent. But, none of us have gone through the experience yet. So I’m sure there will be learning that can be applied to future events." Tim Gerristen, the former CEO of Human Head Software, told us, "I honestly don't think that the new E3 is a replacement for the old show. This is an entirely different animal that is nothing like the old show. Until I see the show, it's too early to call it an improvement or a disaster. However, it is a different show entirely, and the E3 of old has gone the way of the dinosaur, regardless of how this version does." Nikolay Baryshnikov, the International Sales Director of 1C Company, told us, "For 1C this is probably a good thing. E3 was always a purely B2B event for us, we never had any big public stands, and always preferred to spend money elsewhere. All we need from a show is some space to demo upcoming games to partners and press, have some meetings and socialize a bit. Good time of the year, good weather and nice local drinks are always a bonus. 60000+ plus crowd is something I would prefer to avoid. I absolutely hated to go to a meeting and spend half an hour browsing through a thick crowd of people."

The new E3 show will not only have a few thousand attendees, but the amount of companies exhibiting at the various Santa Monica hotels and at the town's 35,000 square foot Barker Hanger will just number 35 exhibitors, compared to over 400 for E3 2006. While the list of companies attending the event do contain all the major game publishers, there are only a few small game developers and publishers attending. Will this emphasis on the larger publishers held or hurt E3? Baryshnikov told us, "I am not completely happy about the "just 35" number. We are working with around 50-60 companies around the world and only half of those would come. On the other hand we always have GC in Germany that actually slowly becomes the most important show for the industry. It has only one problem - location. Not the easiest place on Earth to get to. E3 was probably the only expo where you could meet up with partners from all over the world. The new E3 has a heavy US focus now. Well, guess we just have to have a slightly different focus. Plus I am personally thinking about having a 1C event for distributors (we already had 2 separate ones for press). Gives you a really good opportunity to do what you want and on the ground you choose." Gerritsen told us, "I would like to see a show that offered enough space for larger and smaller publishers, as this new show does seem fairly exclusionary to just the top publishers. I'd call on Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to take a firmer role in this new E3 to promote the best 3rd party games on their respective platforms as well as just their first party fare. I hope that happens. " Hines told us, " I wouldn’t mind seeing more developers and publishers, but in it’s current format of multiple sites I’m not sure how well that would have worked. I would still have preferred to see a scaled back version of what we had with a focus on key press, retailers, and industry people. You could have cut the attendance by 40K in about two seconds, made some other changes in terms of the size and scope of the show and its booths, and been a lot better off."