E3
It is used by many video game developers to show off their upcoming games and game-related hardware.
E3 is invitation-only since 2007, reducing the number of attendees from 60,000 at E3 2006 to the 3,000-5,000 of E3 2007. A separate conference called Entertainment for All Expo has been created to accommodate the public demand for a major, annual video game event, however it has not been able to replicate E3's success.
E3 was previously held in the third week of May of each year at the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC) in Los Angeles.
In 2007, the convention was exceptionally held from July 11 to July 13 in Santa Monica, California. The ESA stated that the event reached a record attendance of 70,000 people in 2005.
E3 is largely regarded as the world's largest regular convention for video games.
Video game companies generally spend more on their presentations for E3 than any other convention (including fancy decorations and pyrotechnics). It coincided with the start of a new generation of consoles, with the release of the Sega Saturn, and the announcements of upcoming releases of the PlayStation, Virtual Boy and SNK's Neo*Geo CD.
Specifications for the Nintendo Ultra 64 (later renamed Nintendo 64) were released, but there was no hardware shown.
The event ran from May 11 through May 13, 1995 in Los Angeles, California. president and CEO Thomas Kalinske; Sony Electronic Publishing Company president Olaf Olafsson; and Nintendo chairman Howard Lincoln.
Layout
The 2007 show was housed in suites and meeting rooms in numerous hotels in the Santa Monica area, within walking distance of each other.
The Barker Hangar was used for showcasing software.
Show floor
Konami booth 2005
When held in Los Angeles, the show was exhibited over five halls: Kentia, Petree, South Hall, Concourse Hall, and the West Hall. At one point, sound levels would fluctuate as exhibitors raised the volume to compete with near by stands.
For 2004, Activision brought in Stan Lee and Tony Hawk to promote X-Men Legends and Tony Hawk's Underground 2 respectively while Vivendi Universal brought in Vin Diesel to promote his new game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a prequel to the summer 2004 film. Celebrities were generally only available for a few hours, so line-waiting was a general practice at E3.
Concourse Hall and lobbies
Rockstar’s invite-only enclosure at E3 2005
The external apparatus that connects the bigger halls is the Concourse Hall and subsequently, the West Hall and South Hall lobbies.
The lobbies were used for registration, picking up badges and badge holders, and other general information. The lobbies were also the signature glass structures of the LACC and were massive structures.
The Concourse Hall generally featured four booths and a few media outlets as well as the Into the Pixel game art exhibition started at E3 2004.
The Concourse Hall was generally used as a link between both lobbies and featured a window display with a beautiful view of downtown Los Angeles.
South Hall
The largest ship of the LACC and the largest exhibition space by default. The RMN Petree was the indefinite home to Atari and Midway's massive booths.
The RMN "West Hall" was also normally temporarily home to private press rooms, and sometimes TV studios, of large gaming media outlets such as IGN, 1UP.com, GameSpy, and GameSpot.
Online scheduling system
In addition to the physical event, E3 supports or is otherwise associated with a number of online sites. One site introduced in 2006 was E365, an online community which attendees use to pre-network and schedule meetings with one another.
Media coverage
Many websites and blogs have a history of providing extensive coverage of E3 with live webcasts, game previews, game media and blog entries covering popular press events.
Some of the more popular sites include, but are not limited to IGN, GameSpot, Kotaku, 1UP.com, GamesRadar, and Gametrailers.
On site, the event is covered by professional journalists from around the world. Originally E3 was almost entirely dominated by print games journalists, the event eventually came to include general and specialist TV crews, newspaper journalists, website journalists, and ‘fansite’ journalists.
Many of these attendees came with consumer-level digital video and photograph cameras.
The E3 press room
On behalf of the organizers, Future Publishing now publishes the free official daily magazine, named in 2006 as ‘The 2006 Official Show Daily’. Previously published by Ziff Davis under "SHOWDAILY", the magazine provides news, and maps of the show floor.
G4 has aired live coverage of E3 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 covering three hours a day over 4 days in the week of the event.
An episode of The Showbiz Show featured Andrew Daly getting live coverage from E3.
2007 restructure
On July 31, 2006, the ESA announced that the expo would be downsized and restructured due to the overwhelming demand from the exhibitors. On October 13, 2006 the new format of the show was detailed.
Although E3 was originally envisioned as an expo open only to game industry professionals, it has grown in recent years to include greater numbers of bloggers and attendees who were not perceived to be industry professionals. Many of these persons were excluded from the revised event, as the ESA announced that the new E3 would be by invitation only.
It was originally speculated that because of these changes, independent developers may have been excluded, and subsequently damaged, in preference for larger game companies. It's such an abrupt end to what was E3, which had been this huge escalating arms race....Right now we're in this kind of dicey, do we have an event, what event is it, which one do we go to? I think we're in an uncomfortable transition zone when really the real E3 died a couple of years ago."
Claimed successor
On August 8, 2006, Gen Con, LLC announced that it would be expanding its gaming exhibits to include video games.
The company also stated that it would increase venue space at its Indianapolis convention and relocate its Anaheim convention to the Los Angeles Convention Center. The company cited a lack of growth in attendance and an increase in competing shows.
On January 5, 2007, IDG World Expo announced that the ESA had endorsed a consumer-oriented successor to E3 called Entertainment for All or E for All (which replaces the GamePro Expo name).