E for All attendance drops in second year

by Alexander Sliwinski { Oct 6th 2008 at 7:15PM }

Despite IDG World Expo's press release touting a "second successful year," attendance at this year's E for All Expo was down. Official attendance numbers were reported to be 15,000, that's down from last year's inaugural event, which saw 18,000 attendees.

The E for All attendance numbers aren't exactly the most robust for an event being held in a megalopolis like Los Angeles, especially when compared to PAX 2008's 58,500 attendees who trekked up through the great wilderness to find the sleepy town of Seattle. Meanwhile, BlizzCon is capped at 15,000 attendees and those tickets, at $100 apiece, sold out almost as soon as they went on sale. IDG has not announced an E for All Expo for 2009 at this point

[Via Big Download]

Tags: e-for-all, e-for-all-08, e-for-all-expo, e-for-all-expo-2008, eforall, eforall08, eforall2008, eforallexpo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

In A World (XBL) @ Oct 6th 2008 7:20PM

E for some.

Blu3bomb3r @ Oct 6th 2008 7:21PM

I had no clue E for all was on since there was no talk about it or any news of it

theturtle363 @ Oct 6th 2008 7:26PM

yeah that's pretty much the point

In A World (XBL) @ Oct 6th 2008 7:26PM

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/06/joystiq-at-e-for-all-the-highlights-of-our-experience/

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/03/joystiq-goes-to-e-for-all/

http://www.joystiq.com/photos/e-for-all-2008/

kinshadow @ Oct 6th 2008 7:26PM

OMG! It's a Zombie!!!! Shoot it in the head!! AGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

joeybeast @ Oct 6th 2008 7:30PM

No shit, I think Jack Thompson's disbarment got more coverage.

Envoy @ Oct 6th 2008 7:32PM

fail much?

Urza @ Oct 6th 2008 7:32PM

E for all? I didn't even know it was going on. :)

Rocket Taco @ Oct 6th 2008 7:37PM

I don't know where you learned your geography, but we're not in the middle of the fucking forest. Seattle is a port city, and not particularly "sleepy."

Jake11 @ Oct 6th 2008 8:54PM

it's called sarcasm. Joystiq writers are masters of it

jumpshot @ Oct 7th 2008 1:25PM

Master it or it will master you...

DKShadow @ Oct 6th 2008 7:37PM

Games Convention had 202.000 attendees this year, so I call fail ^^

Mr Khan @ Oct 6th 2008 7:48PM

At the risk of sounding preachy or soap-boxy (or "talking down" :P) there needs to be one comprehensive mecca. A Tokyo Game Show for the west.

But of course, to do so would require the cooperation of the ESA, and the way they've been treating E3, you would think the E stood for "elitist"

echelon @ Oct 6th 2008 7:53PM

Part of the problem could be Los Angeles itself.
Internationally, LA has a poor reputation. I recently returned from a trip to the US which had me arrive and leave via LAX.

I was warned before we left to avoid LA as much as possible. Land and leave was the advice I was given.
Unfortunately, I was stubborn. Disneyland was too much of a temptation.

My impression of LA was horrible. My wife and I were treated terribly. The main problem was the fact that everybody that I spoke to was incredibly rude. From cab drivers to the purveyor of our accommodation to service staff at restaurants. It wasn't until we got to Disneyland that we were treated like human beings. Our experience in New York and Washington DC was completely the opposite.

Upon further investigation, I am told that the outlying parts of LA are incredible and that I should avoid the city. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to put up with the crap I received to explore them.

Long story short, LA has a poor reputation and in my opinion, for good reason. Perhaps that contributed to the lack of attendees?

Edog Lost @ Oct 6th 2008 8:09PM

I'm sorry to hear that you had such a bad time in my home town. We have some good people here.

You should let all your beautiful women know about our reputation. Seriously I can't keep up with them anymore. We are just overloaded.

Edog Lost @ Oct 6th 2008 8:18PM

The convention was empty because there was nothing there!

EA had a huge space yet nothing new to show. They seriously were demoing Kung Fu Panda on 4 stations. With games like Dead Space coming out in a few weeks, you think they could have had SOMETHING there, a video something.
Really the only draw was Gears 2 Hoard Multilayer.

If you think back to last year. They had MGS4 playable for the first time in the US. They had SSBB, they had a lot of stuff.

I think we are going to see E3 have public days in the future.

McBradd @ Oct 6th 2008 9:24PM

I went the first year, and it sucked like crazy. It had nothing compared to GDC or Siggraph. I might have well been called "Come play a Wii."

Red Leader @ Oct 6th 2008 10:32PM

Hah

brickwalker0 @ Oct 6th 2008 11:56PM

half of the people there last year were only there for Smash Bros Brawl.

that1dj @ Oct 7th 2008 12:30AM

I attended E for All last year, and despite what many said, me, my bro, and my cousin had a blast. The MLG booth was a big draw, allowing us to compete with others on Halo 3.

This year, though, I was disappointed after comparing it to what it was last year. I think the reason why there were less people was the fact that those following announcements of exhibitors saw that less and less companies were being announced as being at the show. I was bummed to hear that THQ, Konami, 2K games, Activision, etc were not attending. To top it off, WCG had announced in a podcast on the E for All site that there were going to have walk-up tournaments for games that were featured in the Finals taking place there and when we asked about entering the tournament for Halo 3, they said there wasn't going to be one, which pissed us off.

Like another commenter said, it was sad to see EA not demoing any new games. I mean Facebreaker and BF: Bad Company? Come on. Where was Dead Space?

And for MS, demoing GRID, Castle Crashers, Viva Pinata:Trouble in Paradise, I was surprised. I was hoping for maybe a demo of Halo Wars (out there, I know) or at least some new footage of upcoming games. GOW 2 Horde mode, though, was everything I heard it was. I only played it for like 10 min but it was f'n awesome. I didn't see anyone make it past Wave 9. And there are 50 waves. It's gonna be awesome playing online.

If there is another one next year, I'll probably attend again. Nice change of pace where I live, which is a few hours away from LA. I wish I lived closer to PAX or had the money to go to TGS.

I really hope these companies see the value in showing off their games to the people that they are making them for. I honestly think it's better for the industry.

I also hope the rumor of the original E3 going public is true. I know it won't be as good as when I attended back in '05, which was just awesome, but at least there would be more to see and demo as well.

Patrick @ Oct 7th 2008 12:55AM

Is there anyone else who thinks that it's a bad sign when a videogame show in Seattle can do 58,000, but a show in L.A. can only do 15,000?

Vizion @ Oct 7th 2008 2:00AM

Give it some time, it'll start gathering more people. The problem is really because it doesn't have enough support by the gaming industry as a whole. No one is using the event to show off new games or products (well nothing major at least)

wako @ Oct 7th 2008 2:49AM

This wouldnt be such a failure of a show if the show wasnt held at such a terrible time. E3 use to be held pretty much right after school let out, thousands of dumb college students like myself would have plenty of time to waste our time and cash for events like these.

Corey B @ Oct 7th 2008 1:32PM

That's right Californians, every other "major city" is a barren wasteland with no life except LA and NY. Seattle is just a tiny "sleepy town" with nothing great to offer the world. Good thing you Californians can set us hicks in Seattle straight. While you are at it could you tell us what political views to have as well? Just because Seattle isn't as overpopulated doesn't mean we don't have a vibrant community of people to draw from.