News Blog

The hottest mess in L.A. last week wasn’t a new Hollywood starlet on a DUI binge; it was the latest Electronic Entertainment Expo. The E3 Media & Business Summit was an inefficient mess that showcased table scraps and locked all the hottest games in meeting-only rooms.

The Showcase Pavillion, the main event of the show, allocated so little space to each publisher that most took their top titles to private meeting rooms. Resident Evil 5, Gears of War 2, Killzone 2 Multiplayer, Resistance 2 Single-Player, Fallout 3, Rock Band 2, Rock Revolution, Street Fighter IV, most PSP titles, most DS titles – not on the floor.

Meeting rooms held a nightclub-like ambience, with the inability for registered media to walk-in and test out games.

One receptionist said that personnel needed to be escorted to a game lounge by a publisher representative.

This isn’t a nightclub, it’s a video games convention. And attendees shouldn’t need a VIP host because they aren’t in Vegas and didn’t order bottle service.

This convoluted web of appointment-only meetings effectively made the entire convention irrelevant. The publishers didn’t need the convention, just rooms for private functions.

The L.A. convention center itself was a ghost town. It never looked like any more than 1,000 people were in the building at once. To limit access even further negates the purpose of the show.

The necessity of the show has become diluted, and it showed. Publishers lacked the urgency to make big title announcements, and most companies will host smaller engagements throughout the year to highlight specific titles. Smaller publishers, retailers and key analysts have altogether ditched the event.

While the former E3 convention was bloated, it did several key things right - provided access to the year’s hottest titles, held many on-floor showcases for non-playable titles, and created a feverish buzz in national media outlets.

The current E3 can’t be the show to represent a $30 billion worldwide industry – now an isolated affair that only a privileged socialite would love.

The video game business deserves better.