E3Expo 2009 Trip Report

[Chescat]

On June 2nd, we arrived at E3Expo which was in the Los Angeles Convention Center around 11:30. I was concerned that the previous ones that occurred after 9/11 you had to be searched as you went in. So we didn’t take much with us the first day so we could bypass the line. Turns out there was no searches and no lines outside.

The Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony press conferences were not in the main halls. Our badges were only for exhibits so even if it was the same place, we wouldn’t have gotten in. Couple things we heard from the conference was that Microsoft has something they are working on that you put your hands on like a steering wheel. Without a device in your hand, the system knows you are moving and turning. That would be awesome, if they can get that going. We also had heard that they had the Beatles there for the Beatles Rock Band (Paul & Ringo got up after Yoko Ono and George Harrison’s son and wife). Its due out in September 2009. Nintendo showed accessories for the Wii and also a small turntable so you can be a DJ. We didn’t see it, but saw pictures of it.

12:00 hit and the doors of South Hall and West Hall opened. The crowd rushed the elevators and the doors. They have a good crowd control there and let only so many at a time. Once you pass the guards, you walk in and just see a mass of big screens and loud sounds. We decided to attack South Hall the first day since that had Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Disney Interactive and a lot of the ones we wanted to see where in that hall.

We hit the Disney Interactive booth first. We went into an exlusive screening of some new console games when we first got there. They were showing Spectrobes Origins, Split Second, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned. The Pirate game looks interesting. Each of these games are scheduled for 2010. We also checked out all the other things in the booth. The booth was Disney Interactive which is the console games. We were assured by the Interactive people that the Pirates team is hard at work and dedicated to us gamers and the game definitely wasn’t going away in the future.

From there we went to the Electronic Arts booth and then UbiSoft since it was the next one over. Checked out some of the stuff and then kind of wandered aimless for a while just trying to take all of it in. First day is always tough, you’re not sure what you want to see, but you try and see how much free stuff you can get and what they got. This year as predicted, free stuff wasn’t much around. But its always fun to try and get as many t-shirts as you can. We wandered over to the G4 booth to watch some of the taping. But there was a ton of people there so couldn’t get to close at that point. Was excited to see the new Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days game and Final Fantasy Crystal Bearers at the Square Enix booth. I love looking at the figurines they always bring with them. I love all the Kingdom Hearts characters (especially the Disney ones). We hit the Microsoft booth and saw this racing game that people were sitting in the “car” and had three screens. The line was too long so we never did get to play with it.

One of the jokes I’ve always had with my Intercot guys are, they specifically tell me that I have to take pics of all the booth babes I can find out the show. The last show in 2006, they had cut back because of some group complaining. Well I can say the booth babes are back. I’m not going to post those pictures here, but the drill has always been I send the pictures along to those who ask!!

We started to get hungry and noticed, no where in South Hall did they have the food places open which I found very odd. So we went ahead and went over to West Hall hoping for food. That wasn’t good either. They had a Chinese food and Taco food stand in the back. I think we both have to say, that was pretty pathetic. But when you get desperate for food, you take what you can get. We didn’t make that mistake the next 2 days and ate in the cafeterias outside the halls.

So after attempting food, we came back and hit the Perfect World booth. The people in there were great. We spent a lot of time with them getting information for the game. We also hit Pros vs GI Joe booth. They have been featured on G4 the last 2 months. They just had a Nascar event in May where the Nascar drivers and the Indiana National Guard played Guitar Hero against each other. We'll have more information coming about these two.

We hit the Activision booth since there seem to be something going on. Realized Tony Hawk was there with Paul Rodriguez. They were demonstrating Tony Hawk’s new game. The boards they were on were great. You could touch the board and the game would give you credit for doing a grab on the board. Was hard to see much at that point with Activision since there were so many people there. We wandered over to the Nintendo Booth which was next door and look around. The Wii sports games and fitness games look great. An example is you can do archery. You put the one Wii accessory in front of you like its your scope and the other accessory you pull back like you are actually doing archery and then release the arrow. It was pretty cool. Also saw they had another Golden Sun DS coming out eventually. I loved that game.

We then went to the Sony booth and looked around. Had our pictures taken with Ratchet. That has always been a favorite series of mine. So we got to see the upcoming version of that. We then hit the Capcom both and saw this cat that was dressed up in armor. Had to get a picture of him. I guess he’s big overseas and they are trying to bring that game here. I can’t wait to see that.

On the way out we saw a band of pirates. They were there for the LucasArts game Monkey Island. I told them that Captain was the captain of our guild in Pirates Online and they definitely lined up for a picture. They handed him a pistol which was scary. Unfortunately, LucasArts is always in a meeting room, so you can never see their stuff. But there is suppose to be two versions coming out. The first is a continuation of the old one. And a new one coming out. Can’t wait to see that. I still have my old PC version of that.

On the way out of the convention center we saw the Ghostbuster mobile outside with the lights going. The Staypuff guy was big against the building and you can take your picture there too. Ironically as we were waiting we saw our Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio R. Villaraigosa, come out of the building. We were talking to the ESPN crew that was filming the Ghostbuster car and he turned and got an interview with the mayor. After that excitement we got back in our car and went home. The fun part of the night after is going through all the stuff you accumulate through the day. Sometimes you think what was I thinking.

That’s the end of Day 1.

[JPL]

Are there presents for me involved with this one?

[Blue Genie]

Did you get pictures of the Kingdom Hearts figures. I hope it ones that I haven't seen yet. I just got a new Kingdom Hearts figures last Thursday of Cloud from Kingdom Hearts 1.

[Chescat]

I had you in mind Genie when I went to the Square Enix booth. I'll send along those figurine pictures to you when I get home.

Figgie, I seem to have forgotten to get you presents at E3. As a consolation prize I got you a Disney Imagineering shirt when I hit their store (does that help?)

[trackbarroness]

Awesome trip report cat. Now does this mean once Mom and I get out to DLR I/we have to post a trip report? I think I've figured out what I need to do to upload pictures from my phone.

[JPL]

Sure that counts

Although I still don't understand how anyone forgets presents for me

[wizardmickey]

Ummmm, just wondering if Olivia, Yoko, Dhani, Paul or Ringo asked about me?
I heard they might be looking for a rhythm guitar player - just sayin'...

[trackbarroness]

Sure that counts

Although I still don't understand how anyone forgets presents for me

Because no-one knows where to send the presents to? Outside of that Idk

[Chescat]

Ummmm, just wondering if Olivia, Yoko, Dhani, Paul or Ringo asked about me?
I heard they might be looking for a rhythm guitar player - just sayin'...

Yeah they were asking us, where is Iceman! We can't get started until he gets here.

[Chescat]

On June 3rd, we arrived at E3Expo around 1:00. After the first day, you really don’t want to get up since you are so exhausted, but we would up staying until closing, so that made up for it.

We decided we would spend most of the day at West Hall since we wanted look around more there. We walked around the Activision booth so we could see more of the games, then Nintendo, then Sony. There’s so many things to look at that it hard to take it all in. We saw our Monkey Island pirates again and got more buttons from them. They had a set of 6 and were going through their bags looking for one of each for us.

Got our lunch and sat down on the floor, since it was raining out and couldn’t sit outside. They were in the middle of putting up the Lakers signs on the side of the Staple Center and they had to stop that until later in the afternoon. Game 1 didn’t start until June 4th. While sitting we saw the Ghostbuster people and Captain saw the Mag guys and got a picture.

We hit the Perfect World booth again and played their 3 games: Perfect World International (The Lost Empire), Ether Saga, and Jade Dynasty. Jade Dynasty is in closed beta right now and we got some beta keys to play the game. It comes out officially on June 12th. These games remind me of the Final Fantasy type games.

After that we went back to the Pros vs GI Joe booth. We saw Greg Zinone again and he said come back in a half hour, the soldiers would be there playing guitar hero. The deal was that if you were in uniform and active duty, you got let into E3, then they just reported to the booth at a certain time. The soldiers were awesome. Got some pictures of them at the booth.

We looked around the rest of West Hall and then started walking over to South Hall. We got Battlefield 1943 t-shirts along the way. We checked out more of the Disney booth again since Tommy had asked what the Toy Story Mania game looked like. Got some pictures of that and then continued on a tour of the hall.

We hit the G4 booth. We missed Steve Wiebe trying for the Donkey Kong world record so didn’t find out really any information about that until later. At UbiSoft they had a Shaun White snowboarding game. I was talked into trying it. I have to admit, it was fun and I didn’t kill myself. We saw the "Rabbids" and then the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They were pretty cool and were posing for everyone. Then continued looking around.

So around 5:30 or so, we called it a night.

That’s the end of Day 2.

[Marla]

Sounds like a fun time.

[trackbarroness]

Sounds like a fun time was had by all.

[TinkRocks]

Sounds like you guys had an action-packed / fun-filled two days. Obviously, lots of new stuff to look forward to...

Did you bug DI about VMK??

[Chescat]

On June 4th, we arrived at E3Expo around 12:00. The concern we had about this day was the Laker vs Magic playoff game at Staple Center at 6:00pm (Staple Center and Los Angeles Convention - West Hall are next to each other on the street). The parking lots near the Staple Center were charging outrageous prices, so we found a place in one of the Convention Center parking lots. Once we parked, we felt a lot better and knew we had to stay until about 6:00 to miss all the oncoming traffic coming in.

Once in, we decided to go through South Hall to see the stuff we hadn’t really done. We first hit the Electronic Arts booth and played some Madden Football. I had no idea what I was doing and got whooped. Then we hit the UbiSoft booth and saw the Ninja Turtles and those “Rabbids”. The joke for the three days was, we found every booth babe or character that was taking pictures and I pushed Captain as the one getting the picture taken. Course he didn’t mind when it was the G4 or the Tailer Park girls. I think the only one we missed was the EverQuest girl, but I’m not sure she was taking picture with people, more posing since her outfit was barely on!

We went back to the Square Enix booth and look at the Kingdom Hearts characters again. I couldn’t find a cheshire cat figurine but the trailers had some pictures of him that I got. Then, went back to the G4 booth. We were able to get pictures of Captain on the stage and playing the Donkey Kong game that Steve Wiebe attempted to beat the world record one. Turns out he missed by 60,000. The machine lost power for a bit after he started and they think he might have made it if that didn’t happen. Oh well, there’s always next year!

We went ahead and found food in the back part of the hall (hooray!) so didn’t have to leave the hall. We looked around at some of the smaller companies that we had missed.

We went back over to West Hall to do a final look see and also to get outside to take pictures of all the Laker stuff on the sides of the Staple Center.

Then back over to South Hall (got our exercise today!) Hit the Eidos booth, but not really that much there. Then, on to the Alienware booth to look at the new systems. Headed over to the Creative Interactive booth and the guys were throwing out t-shirts and having one on one competitions for headsets (we weren’t successful at that since the same tall guy seemed to steal them all from everybody!

We then went back to the MTV Games booth and looked at the Beatles Rock Tour area. There were three stages and people playing the game as the band. I believe those were booth people and not people trying. They had a Lego Rock Tour that people were trying out. Can’t believe there are so many people that sing so badly!

We ended up our night at the Disney booth again. We watched the videos again of their console game Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned and Spectrobes Origins. Captain played the Spectrobes game while I took pictures of the booth. We talked to the Disney Interactive people again. They told us the future of the industry is they are trying to have the ability of PC, PS, XBOX, Nintendo systems being able to play video games together. If the industry can get that, it would be awesome. But its going to take some more engineering to get to that point. We did find the Disney On-Line section. It was showing videos of Toontown, Pirates, Pixie Hallow, Cars and Club Penguin. Again, emphasis of all the booths was consoles this year.

Lesson we learned from this week is, that the industy is continuing to develop. New attachments for the Wii, PS3 and Xbox; the ever evolving games that continue to blow you away; the games now being put out for the iPhone. Captain learned if you find a booth babe, Kat will take a picture; how bad the food really is at the convention center; how many t-shirts do you really need and how you get trampled when the booths start throwing; get home every night and wonder why did I collect so much "stuff".

What we found out about Pirates:

Pirates Online is not going away (like VMK did). There’s a future with the game and there is a team dedicated to the project. The optimization had to take place before the game could go forward. Programming for PC is difficult when you consider that you have so many variables. PS3, Wii and Xbox is pretty much the same across the board. Its good to know that the game we love will be continue to expand.

End of Day 3