Scaled Down E3 Gaming Conference Opens
7/12/07 – On a topic somewhat tangential to local startups and early stage companies but important to the larger technology and entertainment communities, E3, the video game industry conference held yearly in Los Angeles and known in past years for elaborate displays and productions around launches of new titles, opened this week in Santa Monica. But the show has been dramatically scaled down, and is now far from being the big draw of previous years. The Los Angeles Times’ Alex Pham wrote this week about the fact that rather than being a big downtown event that until now was the best attended annual trade show held in Los Angeles, E3 is now an invite-only affair that is expected to draw only 3,000 attendees, compared with last year’s whopping 65,000.
The dramatically scaled down show is not an indicator of bad times in the video game business, as the industry is booming. Instead, as Pham’s article points out, companies have started hosting their own events to promote new titles, and have begun to see E3 as “redundant.” The invite-only aspect also serves to reduce the access of startups to the show and its “insider” status.
Could this be the beginning of a trend in technology trade shows? Are companies finding themselves lost in the hype of big events like E3 and starting to look at alternatives for big launches and promotions? While there is no substantial evidence that this is the case, the scaling down of such a massive show for no other apparent reason is a significant development.
On the other hand, as Pham points out, media company and conference producer IDG is planning its own big video games show in October at the downtown convention center—can it manage to pick up where E3 has left off?
E3 – www.e3summit07.com
