E3 itself

Huxley
Remember this game? The sci-fi first person shooter MMO that was shown at two previous E3s by developer Webzen that was supposed to be the next big thing? Well, Webzen not only didn't show the game at E3 2007 the publisher didn't even bother to show up at the expo at all.

We should also mention how Sony has been handling its Gran Turismo series of racing sims. Originally the plan, announced at E3 2006, was to release Gran Turismo HD, a PS3 version of Gran Turismo 4 with improved graphics but that plan was abandoned (although a free demo was released). Now Sony is saying it will release Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, a new game that will serve as a kind of prequel to what will be the full version of Gran Turismo 5. Geeze..I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it.

The E3 Event Itself
So how was the event itself to attend? There were some good and bad points to coming to Santa Monica There was the weather which was nearly perfect throughout the conference. It was nice that we didn't have to deal with tens of thousands of people who were fighting over getting pictures of celebs or booth babes. The hotel suites were an excellent way to get a demo of a game, chat with the developers in an informal way and generally get a better sense if the game was a real gameplay product rather than just something that was made only for E3. We've heard a few complaints that representatives from major retailers (Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc) were few and far between at this year's E3 but to us this is a non-issue; most retailers have their own conferences anyway and the ones that don't should be able to get a sense on whether a game is good or not by reading E3 press coverage. We were also glad to see lots of international media attending E3 this year. More than one publisher seem to indicate that E3 2007 would be mostly for the North American press but as in years past journalists from all over the world came to Santa Monica to attend and report on E3.

But the format of E3 2008, if there is an E3 2008, needs to change some in order to make future expos a success. One of the biggest problems with this year's show were trying to get to a number of hotels (particularly the Fairmont and Sheraton) and the Barker Arena. They were difficult to get to without the aid of E3 supplied buses and missing appointments was definitely the order of the day. It didn't help that Sony decided to hold its E3 press conference outside Santa Monica (at their Culver City Movie Studios) late on Wednesday morning. An over-long press conference meant that journalists were buses back to Santa Monica very late and caused a lot of previously scheduled appointments with other publishers to be postponed (thankfully the publishers were extremely understanding and were very accommodating if journalists missed appointments and made arrangements to reschedule). Another problem was the Barker Hanger itself. Basically a hot airplane hanger at Santa Monica Airport, the location had a number of publishers show off a number of games but quite a number of the titles were already being shown at the hotel suites. While there were some games only being shown at the hanger the real meat of E3 this year was at the hotels (indeed Microsoft took over an entire Santa Monica hotel, the Viceroy, for the entire E3 week). We also missed seeing a number of smaller publishers at this year's show and we hope organizers do a better job next year in making E3 a more inviting place for them to attend.