The Return of the Real Electronics Entertainment Expo
Earlier this month E3 made its semi-glorious comeback to the Los Angeles Convention Center. It didn’t do a major transformation to the LACC but it did make its presence known with huge banners lining the convention and Square Enix with 3 FFXIII wall banners Hotel Figueroa sported. Its definitely on a larger scaled than the toned down E3 we’ve suffered for 2 years but not as glamorous as its last year in 2006.
A lot of companies weren’t there this year. Blizzard for one wasn’t but the other major ones– Sony, SOE, Nintendo, Activision, EA, XBOXLIVE, Bandai Namco, Sega, Konami etc. It definitely heavily revolved around consoles this year.
I didn’t care for it too much but it was nice to see what was available. Booth babes made a return as well since they were banned from E3 in 2006. As an industry perk and on company time, I went for 1 day. I thought I would need 2 but I only needed 1 day. I walked both the South Hall and West Hall in like less than 2 hours. I’m sure if I was more fascinated with what was there I would have taken longer. I checked out the fancy booths but not enough swag this year. Kind of a good thing since I’m a junk collector. I scored a couple of things like a Harvest Moon drawstring backpack from Natsume. They weren’t giving it out but I saw a lady hand somebody one and I went to ask. The best swag I got was a shoulder/cross chest backpack from Alienware. It was a pretty nice backpack and it had a aluminum water bottle, headphones, and a flash drive. I heard the next day Alienware claimed it was for press. If you weren’t Press or had the All-Access pass you were basically a non-important person. The companies disregard you as you present no value to them. You didn’t have access to lounges or special promos. :<
All in all I had fun at E3 and I’m sure others would have appreciated it more than I did. Too bad they don’t work for the industry. :>