Video Games

This used to be the time of year when anyone interested in gaming began to get excited about the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, a nonstop, weeklong party and press conference for the industry held in Los Angeles.

But the extravaganza got so outsize and expensive that, after last year's show, the organizers announced future expos would be much smaller, more subdued and much more exclusive.

So the Entertainment Software Association just sent out formal invitations this week to a core group of games-industry journalists – me included – for the new, invitation-only "E3 Media & Business Summit" July 11-13 in Santa Monica.

The inclusion of the word "Business" is presumably to indicate that there will be far fewer booth babes and inflatable swords, and more people who take showers every morning.

From a reporter's point of view, this is a good thing.

All the big companies will still be there. And Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft will conduct their regular press events, during which they talk about current products and unveil new ones.

If the crowds are smaller, that should also make it easier to get around and get a look at all the stuff we reporters want to see.

And if the overall decibel level on the show floor is lowered from nuclear explosion to mere Niagara Falls levels, conducting interviews should be much easier.

On the other hand, though, I wonder if this smaller footprint is good for the overall health of the industry.

After all, E3 was the one game event where you could count on seeing coverage of the industry in just about every news medium. A lot of people who never played games at least caught a whiff of the growing enthusiasm for games and may have been tempted to pick up a controller.

Now, I wonder how much press the upcoming "Summit" is going to generate.

There's a lot of concern among gamers that the new and improved E3 isn't going to generate nearly as much new information as previous shows had, and that it won't reflect the huge financial growth of the industry.

If so, mainstream news organizations will likely shy away and this event will go unnoticed by anyone who doesn't already care passionately about video games. If that happens, it wouldn't be surprising if E3 eventually gets killed off altogether.

Plus, as onerous as it was reporting on the old E3, and as obnoxious as some of the marketing gimmicks and pointless fluff could be, there was something exciting about the carnival atmosphere.

Sony may already be losing faith in the selling power of the PS3.

This week, the company announced that Ken Kutaragi, the 56-year-old chairman and group chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., is retiring in June.

This is the guy often called the father of PlayStation, and the driving force behind the creation of the PS3.

Given all the problems Sony has had with the PS3 – the $600 price, lack of games (did we mention the price?) – it's not surprising that the PS3 is in third place in the sales race with Nintendo and Microsoft.

So Mr. Kutaragi is being shown the door, and underling Kazuo Hirai is taking over the top spot.

But this sure seems like a panicky move from Sony just a few months into a battle likely to last half a decade or more.

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