So, they're starting to realize that killing E3 was a bad thing.

I wonder how many years it'll take before it ends up the way it was before again.

THE RETURN OF KENTIA HALL!!

I can't wait to see what kind of retarded Wiimote accessories the little Korean companies come up with!

@ Gray 17

"I wonder how many years it’ll take before it ends up the way it was before again. "

Hopefully never, I think the ECA should take this on as a project for the future....a tradeshow for the consumers! A perfect fit I would say.

This new crap is not E3. They need to stop exploiting the name of E3 and rename the show something else. The tradeshow enviroment WAS E3.

I think it would work, I mean lets look at the previous E3 shows, pack to the gills with fans. If it would be too costly to do it yearly, what about biennial events? They are a 9+ billion dollar industry thank to the consumers, why not reward them with a show every now and then? I remember folks would talk about the E3 months before it opened, excited about what they may or may not see.

Where's the Bull?

Yaaaaaaaaay

@Sidewinder

That'd be some of the reasons to scale back E3. Unfortunately, what they did was kill it entirely. Which left them lacking in other areas, such as centralization, and smaller publishers and such.

in other words, they wanted to kill e3, but e3 didn't want to die.... nice.

I'm all for E3 being an industry only event. Customers have no place there and customer orientated marketing has no place there. I don't want millions of dollars of development money thrown into fancy booths that only exist for a few days and booth babes - I want that money used to make better games. How can any fellow gamer say that they would rather see pictures of fancy booths - most of you aren't going to be actually be there to see them in person - then have higher-quality games?

I also don't want the industry handling a consumer show. Let us handle it and let us invite who we want and let us set the rules. PAX is doing a pretty damned good job of it.

What on earth is wrong with booth babes???!!! They work just fine at TGS!

"Everyone agrees that this year’s E3 in Santa Monica didn’t quite work out."

Don't be fooled. Most people I talked to actually liked E3 last year. It wasn't the hotel setup itself that was a problem (all of the hotels were within one block of one another except for the Fairmont, which was kind of a hassle). The big problem was Barker Hangar, which was in the middle of nowhere and pretty much useless. I don't know why they didn't use the Santa Monica events center, where Nintendo held their press conference. It's right across the street from the main hotels, so that would have been much more convenient.

The press and publishers seemed to be generally in much better spirits, and much less frazzled than past E3s. Companies showed fewer -- but more prominent -- titles, demo reps weren't hoarse from shouting over blaring techno music for eight hours, we were able to get information up faster than ever because our appointment schedules weren't as hectic, and the general mood from everyone felt much more focused and pleasant.

One of the biggest problems last year was that the ESA did a very poor job of organizing the invite lists (as we heard from several publishers who all said communication was horrible), so hopefully they'll get that settled this year.

I'm personally not excited about E3 being back at the LA Convention Center because downtown Los Angeles is boring, lacks basic services such as late night food, and is, quite frankly, scary. Santa Monica was much better IMO, so I'm kinda sad to see it go back to the LACC so soon.

I was one of the people surveyed post-E3, and my sentiments then mimic what I'm saying now.

@gray

that and it's really hard to kill a good thing, I mean "harder than getting jack thompson disbarred" hard.

Sure Gray, it wasn't perfect, but by that standard E3 never "quite worked out" :0)

I've been going to E3 since 1995 (and CES in Chicago before that, which was the genesis of E3), and I have to say E3 2007 was by far the most focused in terms of product, most pleasant in terms of general attitude of the attendees, and least stressful E3 I've ever attended. Even with the SNAFUs, it was actually better last year than any year it was held at the LACC (in my opinion, of course) and that's considering that the week before, I was absolutely dreading going to the "new" show for fear of the new format.

Of course, the big losers last year were the smaller companies, since they didn't really have much of a presence at the Santa Monica show. However, by the sound of it, the ESA wants to keep the smaller focus, so they may not be represented at the 2008 show, either.

We'll just have to see how it is this year, but I (along with several other people I've talked to) will miss what they were trying to do in Santa Monica. Just don't move it back to Atlanta, or to Las Vegas for that matter! After spending two hours in cab lines during CES, I never want to go to another convention in Vegas. *shudder*

Why not do both? Have the top guys in the back rooms getting the real info, while us consumers can still get a taste for ourselves, and a show, in the main area?

Personally, I really wanted to see E3 for myself someday...