Both Gamespot and Game Informer have grilled ESA president Doug Lowenstein on the future of E3, or at least this new thing they're calling E3. They cover a lot of topics, from how the show will shape up next year, to the reasons for the change. He denies reports that any companies pulled out of the show, saying that companies were evaluating their presence at E3 next year, but "they do it all the time."

There's nothing magic about this year, I think. It really is a question of looking at where it was 12 years ago when we launched it, when you had an industry that didn't have a lot of visibility. Sites like yours didn't even exist at the time. The major mainstream media didn't even cover it. So the industry was looking for something that really galvanized attention around the industry. It was also a retail-oriented event where retailers would come and they would write orders and companies would be able to say, "I invested a lot of money and I sold a million units, and it was a great show."

Obviously the industry gets a huge amount of visibility from a cultural and entertainment standpoint now that it didn't 12 years ago. Retail has consolidated, and the whole process of interacting with retail has changed. Companies are seeing retail 12 months a year. This is not an order-writing show anymore. So I think it's gradually become clear that the primary thing that's driving the event is the media.

The event is now called the "E3 Media Festival" and looks to attract about 5,000 industry insiders versus the 60,000 attendees at E3 2006. It's currently planned to move from mid-May to early July. The show also won't take place in the LA Convention Center next year, but rather a hotel or set of hotels:

Yeah, well it is all subject to working with the people here in LA and with our members in further designing and structuring the event. The hope is to have at least one, maybe more than one headquarter hotel where we can basically take over the properties and set up the companies in suites that make sense for the kinds of meetings they want to occur. Those will be the focal points and we'll probably have a big room that will be a state-of-the-art AV room for press conferences. That'll be sort of our central operating point. Then there'll be offsite press events like the console companies do now. There may be other offsites, as some companies may decide that they're going to take advantage of the new format to do media events in other parts of town in other ways that we can't quite yet envision.

Given this set up, there won't be any booths in the traditional sense -- he mentions the a possibility of 10x10 booths in a hotel ballroom or something, but nothing like the elaborate displays at previous E3s. Also, this smaller layout and more confined and regulated influx of people makes it much harder for fans or other non-industry, non-press people to get in without an invitation and credentials.

He also responds to one of my first concerns -- whether the big 3 press briefings before the show will continue.

First of all I think you’ll still have the console press conferences. I don’t know if you were at Microsoft this year where they did the press conference and then did the breakout at the Roosevelt Hotel. They had the demo kiosks and suits and so forth. I think you’ll see a lot more of that.

I think all of the first parties will continue to have big press conferences. And then emulate in some shape or form the kind of setting that Microsoft had. I think there will be opportunities that will be unique now for some of the third parties to have their moment in the sun if, which we haven’t been able to do because the way E3 has sort of evolved – you have these big console press conferences and then the show launches. It’s just this “every man for yourself.” We’re going to try to create much more dedicated spots in the program for third parties who want to get out particular information, showcase their product lines and so forth, and have that opportunity, as well.

He makes some very good points, and it really does seem like this was inevitable. There really isn't any point to making a lot of big, expensive noise once a year to get noticed when you're already noticed year round. For other impressions on the news, Gamespot's staff have each weighed in on the subject from the press point of view, and FiringSquad talks with a number of people in the industry for the developer and publisher perspective.