Instead of featuring a host of game companies with booth babes and elaborate
exhibits all vying for the attention of some 60,000 attendees at the enormous
L.A. Convention Center, the show will be significantly scaled down to about
5,000 attendees -- mostly media members like us! -- and will take place at a
couple of hotels where game companies will be able to deliver their messages to
a more targeted audience without the insane crowds and ridiculous clutter of
previous shows. The show will take place next July instead of May.

With the advent of the E3 Media Festival, it's safe to say the E3 Expo as we
knew is dead. The show will be an unrecognizable version of its former self. And
honestly, I can't say that's a bad thing. No one in the industry that I talked
to before E3 this year was looking forward to attending the mega-event; it had
become an exhausting affair where little business could be conducted. So the E3
Media Festival will most likely be a good thing for journalists like Aaron and
me. But what about the rest of the world? Is it a good thing for the video game
industry, which is currently experiencing some growing pains and struggling to
develop a more efficient economic model, to suddenly be without its most
important promotional event? I'm not so sure.