E3 has always been somewhat of a booming event for the industry, it's like the big top show. If you ahd something you wanted to blow everyone away with, you did it at E3 and everyone clamored around and gave their attention be it the industry reps, media, fans or whoever.

The show had taken on new weight over the years though, new people were showing up, suddenly everyone and their mother was a sales associate or some other fancy title for "I work at target, eb, gamestop, best buy, etc" which basically meant, that for all purposes, they had no real place there except to pick up free stuff and sit on demo machines when press or other industry people were trying to get hands on experience or demonstrations from the developers themselves. Companies were upping the ante with new ways to pull people in, contests, treasure hunts, mini game shows, and just loads of marchandise ended up being the solutions.

Now don't me wrong, I loved some of the perks, it was nice. But it was drifting further from a show based around info for the media, and more towards a general gaming show where if you were lucky, you got to play what was going on.

The ESA took an evaluation after last year, they decided to cut the cord on the LACC, something that honestly, could have been corrected and kept had they invested time. Instead we move out of LA and into Santa Monica, a place for nice weather and a fairly nice area. The show this year takes place in a variety of locations across Santa Monica, the Civic Auditorium, the hotel district, some spots in LA for those who didn't rent a room in a hotel and a trip to Culver City for those lucky to attend the Sony Conference.

The overall layout is quite spread around, for those attending conferences the show pretty much is designed to allow minimal appointments with the rest of the time jam packed with conferencing. The venue to say the least is tiny. The exhibition hall of course has been made over, by this they have scaled down the displays dramatically and from what was seen on the first day, not many people were interacting or even really knew what they were doing. Poor markings pretty much made it an easy pass for the unaware driver.

There were some good parts to the show, shuttle services and buses ran the show thanks to help from the companies and the ESA, that way people wouldn't break their bank accounts trying to travel by taxi. In the food department, the ESA kept people hydrated and snacking, a plus, and they provided a massive computer center to work out of as well. Another boost of course.

Overall though, the effectiveness of the show seems to have gone down, one on one sessions with developers in the live environment is kinda gone, and I think for a lot of it, they kinda needed that interaction level in a big environment so they could be approached again instead of having to make another appointment.

Lets skip on past the design of the new show and get into the meat of what there was to experience.