18,000 attend E for All; but first, a little panic

Anyone else notice the new date is likely to be the same weekend or within one weekend of PAX. Will either show suffer from that close a timetable? Of course PAX 08 date hasn't been announced yet so this is speculation.

Even though it was a little sparse this year, I feel everything has to start somewhere right? Everyone was expecting this to be like the big E3 but I think that's a little unfair considering it's a brand new show. Perhaps next year it will bigger and better then this year.

Or maybe it won't. Time will tell I suppose.

Yahoo! News also said that the MLB All-Star game is this week, so...yeah.

18,000? I think more people showed up to watch Def Leppard in the beer tent at the fair this year.

E for All was actually pretty great. Having gone to all the e3's I was at first a little worried, because when we got there, it looked a little empty.

But as the show went on, my initial concern is what made it so great. When the wii debuted at e3, the line was hours to get in. And more time in line to play each game. At E for All, the top wait was like 5-10 minutes. You could play Mario or Smash easily. Same goes for Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3. The only wait was for Metal Gear, and even that was tame compared to e3.

In all, I'm glad they're having it again. It was worth going.

Yeah, let's plan against PAX! Great job, E For All people. I know PAX isn't scheduled yet but you're damn close. I know if I decide to go somewhere next year around that time, I'll be in Seattle. With like 30,000 of my friends (2007 estimate).

Overall, the event was decent.

It was a breath of fresh air to not have to endure suffocating crowds and soul crushing 3+ hour lines to see big name games. The swag that was handed out was typical e3 quality goods, which in and itself wasn't that bad. With the relatively few number of companies this entire event (which barely filled South Hall), almost everything could be adequately experienced in the course of one day, which could be a good or bad thing.

The companies that were there made a good effort to have a quality presentation, though very few actually surveyed these crowds for QA purposes (Konami was really the only one). I was glad to see that the companies that did show up brought their A game to the table and showed the fans what they wanted to see front and center.

Personally, I've got a feeling that this was just a preliminary examination for what will turn into a much larger venue in future years.

For something that was advertised as a consumer event, there weren't very many consumers that went. If they made E for All free like they do with TGS (?) in Japan, then this would've been a different story.

Just like every gaming conference/convention I have gone to, the Nintendo maniacs (those that give fanboys a bad name) were out in full force at E for All. They'd cut in front of you to play Smash Bros. and would hiss at you if you reminded them where the end of the line was.

I felt like GH3 for the Wii didn't get the attention it deserved from the consumers that /were/ there. It was the only place to try out any song in the full list (besides the bonus songs) since the 360 versions only had 5 songs to try.

It was a little odd that Konami wouldn't allow anyone to video or take a picture of MGS4. I'm sorry, Konami; I thought this was a consumer show, not a trade or press showing. Even though I didn't get to play it because of the ridiculous line, the game looked great to me. If they were worried about bugs and/or gaming mechanics that aren't perfect, then this was their chance to adjust/fix those issues. People are lining up to test this game FOR FREE!

Indiecade was very interesting. It was a section at E for All where they showed a few very good indie-made games. I just wished the gaming press for it was somewhat existent. Look out for Braid and N+ on XBLA next year!

IDG World Expo, please reschedule E4A 2008 (because most gamers would rather go to PAX) and either cut the admission price, or just get rid of it altogether.

Weird -- that Reuters E3 story from the Hollywood Reporter was actually originally published in July for the "real" E3. Someone over there must have gotten their articles mixed-up and republished it again.

MS and Sony not being there doesn't really matter: everyone goes straight to the Nintendo booth anyway.

I went. . . and had a lot of fun too.

The show wasn't as big as E3, who honestly thought it would be? Any comparison between E for All and E3 was idiotic from the beginning. No first-year convention could ever match the way E3 was when it ended in 2006.

In anycase there was a lot of stuff to do, which was a relief because there wasn't too many companies attending. In addition to all the standard games that you could play like MGS4 (awesome), Super Smash Bros Brawl (awesome), Rock Band, Mario Galaxy, etc. there was also a few really neat vendors trying to showcase their wares like the Novint Falcon which is a force feedback gun apparatus for FPS games. The thing was unreal and made Half Life 2 feel way different.

Overall I enjoyed the show a lot and am glad to hear that they will be returning next year as I fully plan on attending.

It was great for 1 day, but I can't imagine going 2 or more days as you would just be playing the same games over and over. It was nice not having to wait long to play games, but it was pretty obvious that the show would have been better with Sony and Microsoft. The ticket prices were a bit steep too. If they come down in price next year it might encourage more people to attend.

nah quit faking the funk, guys, it sucked. having the pleasure to go to e3 for tha last 5 yrs following e3'06, i was very disapointed & nothing's gonna change that. more than 1/2 of tha developers that claimed they would be there pussed out & it was just emptied & not worth the $90 for a 3 day pass. IM GONNA GO OUT ON A LIMB & say The IGN LIVE Event was better htan this & that was pathetic. plus there were MORE POLICE then There was video games...

The event was ok but had no reason to be 4 days long. I bought a 4 day pass and only ended up going Thursday. No conferences, no panels, no interviews, NO SCHEDULED EVENTS PERIOD. That is not how you do a multi-day show. I went to Anime Expo last year and I couldn't care less about anime... I found that more engaging because stuff was going on all 3 days at different times. I walked the whole floor 4 times on Thursday and had enough. I'll be playing these games at home in 2 weeks anyway so what was the point?

Schedule some real events and I'll be interested. Lower the price too. Geez, I paid $90 a ticket to go to a big Gamestop. I paid like $20 to go to the much hated IGN Live 2 years ago and it was infinitely better despite being in a smaller venue.

The ticket prices were a bit steep, but I made out with like 7 t-shirts. My friend also won a bundle of stuff including bioshock for pc, a pair of nice headphones, and world of warcraft setup including the expansion.

I didn't get to play all the games I wanted to because my friends and I played in a Smash tournament where we got our butts handed to us by a bunch of wavedashing Foxes. But it was fun stuff. I kind of agree that there wasn't enough to come back for another day, but Brawl was fun (damn timed matches and sudden death). The battle mode for GHIII SUCKS ASS -- there is actually an advantage for playing EASIER difficulties because you get the star power easier to mess up your opponent. I wanted to try rock band but didn't get the chance.

They really needed metal pads for DDR. I might go back next year but probably not -- I basically went for Brawl (which I was disappointed because they didn't have 'cube controllers set up and the classic controllers suck because of no analog stick). Oh, and my impressions of brawl? It felt faster than Melee, but the characters are a lot bigger in comparison to the stages. It felt a little cramped.

Here is my Humorous coverage of the "E for Al'' Expo this past weekend. I don't want to spoil it :-p


http://gaxonline.com/blogs/gary/archive/2007/10/22/40228.aspx

Typical ticket-counting for conventions doesn't actually count the number of attendees. It's how many days of access were sold in total. Since there was no 1-day pass, that 18,000 up there is misleading.

They pulled 9,000 attendees, tops. Considering that they also sold 3-day passes, the number's guaranteed to be even smaller. Let's not forget the vast majority of stories from this convention also mention that everyone saw the whole damn thing in one day.

PAX 07, the E4A marketing team showed up, trying to hawk tickets and talk up the event as something that was going to dwarf PAX in size. They said something along the lines of "Hey, next year you guys should go to LA instead, this thing is going to be way bigger." While I admire the sheer testicular fortitude that would take, walking right into "hostile territory" in order to pitch a direct competitor, this most recent showing from IDG is an embarrassment. The E4A staff knows it. The gamers know it. Last but DEFINITELY not least - the exhibitors know it.

This event was touted as a convention.

Wrong.

It was pretty much a live-action gaming magazine. The whole reason E3 died was because IDG forgot that the only people who really matter when it comes to video games are the gamers. Looking over last week's events, I don't think they really remembered.

Developers don't pull attendees. Gamers can read all about the games, they can see all the trailers, they can freaking visit the websites all they want. Hell, magazines send out demo discs if they want to give gamers a taste of what's to come. There was nothing at E4A that you couldn't find in any run-of-the-mill gaming magazine, only it was about 300 times the price. What was the point?

Words of advice to any IDG people reading:

- Scheduling parallel to PAX is tantamount to suicide. Your track record has now been established as "bad." Theirs is something like "this is the best convention to advertise at. The attendees rule, there's a ridiculous amount of traffic, and the staff are far and away the best we've ever seen."
- While having the #1 gamer in the world grace your trade show (it's not a con. don't use that word here.) might be construed as cool and all, honestly very few people cared. I mean, props to fatal1ty for being good at what he does, but FPS is only one genre, and those who follow competitive gaming are a very very small subset of gamers in general. Expecting him to pull gamers is... I'm tempted to say "indicative of the fact that you really don't understand your market."
- Learn about your audience! Gamers are well-informed. Those who are willing to pay for a convention pass already know about any big names you're going to pull. They've seen every screenshot. Read every developer's blog. Watched every trailer. It's safe to assume they know what games are coming out soon, how pumped they should be for it, so on and so on. Point is, you can't really sell gamers on anything - they are by far the most well-informed type of consumer out there. So stop trying. Entertain them. Make them want to be there. Make it FUN for crying out loud.
- Give a thumbs up to nintendo for hiring those amateur models. They were cute.