2007 E3 Expo News
E3 07 Updated & Detailed
Newly renamed E3 Media and Business Summit will be held July
11-13 at a Santa Monica venue and a variety of Los Angeles
hotel locations.
By Scott Weiss
July 1, 2007
The Entertainment Software Association today clarified a number
of significant details of the new, downsized Electronic Entertainment
Expo, now renamed the E3 Media and Business Summit. In July,
<http://www.gamespot.com/news/6154961.html>the ESA said
the megasized and circuslike Electronic Entertainment Expo,
held in the massive Los Angeles Convention Center, would be
"evolving into a more intimate event."
Today, the ESA announced that such intimacy will be found
in Barker Hangar, a 40,000-square-foot property located in
Santa Monica, California. The organization also confirmed
that the event will no longer be held in May and will now
run from July 11 to 13. While the total square footage of
the hanger is significant, E3 organizers say they will only
sell 16,000 square feet of usable space to exhibitors.
No information on the "Big Three" pre-E3 press conferences
traditionally staged by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony--which
are not organized by the ESA--was available as of press time,
though the July announcement indicated they would continue.
The ESA confirmed the event would be invitation-only and be
open to both ESA members and nonmembers. "The new E3
event will be more personal, efficient, and focused, and it
will provide the top stakeholders who make games, sell games,
and cover games streamlined access to the people and products
they most need to see," ESA president Doug Lowenstein
said in a statement.
Display areas in the hangar will be limited to between 100
and 400 square feet and be much more modest than the massive
booths that dominated E3s of yore. Complementing the Barker
Hangar location--"where attendees will be able to casually
test drive the featured video games planned for the coming
holiday season and beyond," according to the ESA--will
be hotel suite and meeting room sessions at a number of additional
Santa Monica and Los Angeles locations.
The ESA said there will also be a number of lunchtime panels
and executive presentations, as well as a serious games component
to the event.
"By combining suite-based meetings with the software
showcase in a controlled and business-like environment,"
Lowenstein said, "we believe we will successfully fulfill
our primary objective of giving high-level media the best
of all worlds--the chance to engage in highly personal, one-on-one
dialogue with leading game company executives, as well as
the chance to demo games on their own time."
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