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Laakkonen doesn't believe much has changed in this regard for E3. "It was hard for the smaller publishers and developer to get noticed in the old E3 format too. It was an all out arms race and unless you could afford spending millions, you wouldn't get noticed. So I don't think much has changed." Giolito agrees, saying, "If the 35 includes all of the major software publishers and hardware suppliers, then I’m sure that would be fine. The independents had little opportunity of getting exposure at the old E3 anyway. They just couldn’t compete." Pitchford adds, "Fundamentally, E3 is an ESA event, so ESA members are going to be the first round of participants. As everyone can understand what the new event is and what the value is, smaller game publishers can consider the cost/benefit depending upon what options are available to them. Because of the radical changes, there is a lot of hope, but a lot of uncertainty. Uncertainty means risk and smaller publishers and developers are differently equipped to deal with the kinds of risk involved in participating in an event like this."

Smart, however, doesn't think the new E3 is worth the time. "I can't imagine why anyone would want to go to E3 now really. Of course, one of the bigger draws is that the buyers (e.g. from Best Buy, Target, GameStop etc) get to come out and be able to see most of the games in action, while wheeling and dealing the whole time. For the publishers, it makes it a bit easier for the sales people who normally would have less than five minutes - tops - to pitch a game to a buyer under any other circumstances. With E3, you can also hope that the buyer was there to see the game, so when you later either go back to do a follow-up or pitch it the first time, there is a chance that the buyer probably already saw it at E3.I dunno man, but with the advent of the Net as we know it, E3 is, IMO, outdated, overpriced and a sordid waste of time. I can't think of a single game related thing that E3 would provide (outside of the aforementioned chance to rub shoulders, go to wild parties etc) that the rest of the world wouldn't have already seen on the web, or the past two conferences of February and March respectively. How many times do you think you want to gawk at Crysis?" Gerritsen tends to agree, saying, "E3 never made much sense. For the cost of a typical booth at E3, most publishers could fly all the press they could ever want first class to a resort and give them much better access to the games. Many publishers did just that in addition to the E3 booth, and they started to realize the bang for their bucks wasn't the greatest."

One big issue with the old version of E3 for many was the May date, which caused headaches among developers as they tried to make a demo of their game specifically for E3 and stopping work on the game in general. The change from May to July seemed to be a positive as developers would be able to continue making their game and show off a more complete build at the show. Gerritsen told us, "I applaud this move, actually, as May was always too soon after GDC, but that's from my perspective as a developer. However, for publishers this will make things that much tighter moving into the busy holiday season. Retailers plan their Christmas season over the Summer, and by having the show now in July, this ratchets up the pressure. Additionally, this will put further pressure on the already eroding print game press. They have lead times of up to three months, especially with disc bound magazines looking to score that hot demo, meaning that games shown off in July won't make the print mags until late September or early October. I wonder if publishers, who have, until now, tended to reserve internet announcements until after the print magazines have had a chance to get the news out, will go more and more directly to online news sites for their big announcements and rely even less on print mags." Laakkonen agrees, saying, "As the industry still obsesses about the holiday period and crams so many titles into the September - December timeframe, the July timing is much better for developers. The games will be a lot further and so we might see less of the annual "E3 crunch". Pitchford told us, "With respect to the sales channel loop, there isn’t much different between May and July relative to the holiday season. I’ve always felt it’s a good idea to run E3 in the non peak sales windows. July is consistent with that."