Screenplay reports that Australian games developers, journalists, and retailers are unable to attend the newly downsized E3 expo this year. The invite-only E3 is a more intimate affair and now focussed on the North American market. In fact, if you're not "purely for the North American market", don't expect to get an invite to E3 at all. It has left the local games industry to contemplate alternative events to market their products. Chris Hanlon, CEO of the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia says to Screenplay...
"I think it would be too early for us to mobilize our resources to make it happen this year but we're just in the process of talking to all the companies that organise game shows both here and in New Zealand with a view to potentially partner with someone next year."
Read the entire article over at Screenplay from the following link...
If this means that Australia will ultimately end up with it's own E3 style event, then that will be a good thing... I'm just disappointed I won't be able to go across and check out all the awesome titles that Nintendo will no doubt be show casing.
Yay. First post!
More importantly, are there still going to be booth babes at E3?
I dont care if it doesnt come, I'll be too busy playing my Wii anyway!
Aussie babes are way hotter than american slurries anyway!
Kotaku has a follow up to this story:
Take some deep breaths everybody. Calm down.
If that were the case, this would be extraordinary news. But let's take a look at what it was, exactly, that caused this frenzy:
The IEAA has been in contact with the ESA to see if we were able to secure a block of tickets for retailers or journalists to get them into the show and we weren't able to do that. The advice that we received back from the ESA was that the show is purely for the North Americans
The IEAA is the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia. And they're asking to book tickets for retailers and journalists. Fine, the retailers not being allowed might be a pain for them, but at a downsized, don't-have-a-showroom-floor-anymore E3 like we're looking at this year, retailers aren't going to be vying for people's time anyway, American or not. No big loss.
As for journalists not being able to "secure tickets", we knew that already. No journalist is able to secure tickets in advance, as we've known for months that E3 is now invite-only. And those invites will go out to the people companies want them to go out to, regardless of which country they're based in.
A quick call to the ESA confirmed this - anybody who makes or publishes games, hardware, accessories or peripherals can attend, irrespective of their nationality.
All is well. All is calm. Luke Plunkett
PS: this commenting system is rubbish! it won't allow any links to be posted! WTF?
It's an antispam measure. You don't know how much spam attacks this site gets via the comment areas :( You can post links though if you log in to your Sumea Profile account first.
Here's the link to the story you're reffering to: <a href="http://kotaku.com/gaming/e307/e3-international-lockout-not-really-24240…">http://kotaku.com/gaming/e307/e3-international-lockout-not-really-24240…;
You should check out PALGN re: this story (The article is titled 'E3: Purely for the American Market'). Apparently they have received an official invitation to attend E3, so it looks like overseas journo's are being invited, but only a select few. The other thing is, while its not on the same scale, eGames and Entertainment expo is back on in Melbourne in November, so thats some consolation.
And yeah, Aussie booth babes are the best - American ones tend to be stuck up as all hell :)